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♦V' 

•''THE WORKS OF 
HENRY VAN DYKE 
AVALON EDITION 
VOLUME XIV 

MESSAGES AND PERSUASIONS 


I ✓ 





^ //if lSr> 




EVANGEL 


Behold I bring you good tidings of great joy 
which shall be to all people . — Luke 2:10 


THE GOSPEL FOR AN AGE OF DOUBT 

AND 

THE GOSPEL FOR A WORLD OF SIN 


BY 

HENRY VAN DYKE 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
1921 


CO py a 


Copyright , 1921 , by Charles Scribner's Sons 

The Gospel for an Age of Doubt 
Copyright , 1896 , by The Macmillan Company 

The Gospel for a World of Sin 
Copyright , 1899 , by The Macmillan Company 



§)CI. A627626 


t 






DeUicateB to 

THE DEAR MEMORY OF 
MY FATHER AND GUIDE 

HENRY JACKSON VAN DYKE 

AND TO 

THE LOVING COMRADESHIP OF 
MY SON AND COMRADE 

TERTIUS VAN DYKE 
























































































































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PREFACE 


The two books in this volume came directly 
out of the experience and work of a man try- 
ing, however imperfectly, to help other men 
through the service of the Christian ministry. 

The light which Christ had given me in the 
conflict with intellectual doubt, the aid and 
comfort which his Cross had brought me in the 
inward and outward fight with evil, I wished to 
pass on to other men. 

How closely limited this power of “ passing 
on” is, how little our systems and theories in 
religion can do for others, how truly every man 
must “come and see” for himself what Christ 
can do for him, I know now even better than 
I felt then. Writing to-day I might press some 
arguments and conclusions less absolutely than 
I did twenty years ago. But my central con- 
viction that the light and hope and deliverance 
of the world are in the gospel of a person, and 
that Jesus Christ is that person, and that to 
know him as the Son of God is immortality, 
— this conviction remains unchanged. Why 
change the form in which it was uttered ? 
vii 


PREFACE 


After all the volume makes no claim to be a 
system of theology; it is only the partial record 
of a working, struggling faith. The spirit in 
which it was written is that of the apostle John, 
in his first epistle: “That which we have heard, 
which we have seen with our eyes, which we 
have looked upon, and our hands have handled, 
of the Word of life, . . . declare we unto you, 
that ye also may have fellowship with us.” 

The first book, The Gospel for an Age of Doubt , 
consists of lectures given on the Lyman Beecher 
Foundation at Yale University in 1896. The 
divinity students to whom they were addressed 
appealed to me less as budding theologians than 
as young men with a life to live and a work 
to do in the modern world, in their own age, 
in their own way. The question, “How to 
make sermons,” was far less important for them 
than the question, 44 What to preach.” For if 
they did not have a real gospel, — good news, — 
there was no call for them to be ministers. 
They would better be carpenters or mechanics 
or farmers, — more useful ! 

Now that age, — the close of the nineteenth 
century, — was one of doubt. Not of atheism, 
nor of positive disbelief, you understand, but 
of universal questioning, hesitation to believe 
in anything spiritual, and consequent uncer- 
viii 


PREFACE 


tainty and sadness. The only good news that 
I could find in such an age was the answer of 
Jesus to the questionings and needs of the souls 
of men, which physical science had neither 
stilled nor satisfied. This was the gospel which 
had brought help to me in a battle with doubt 
whose darkness I did not care tQ recall. This 
was the gospel I wished to persuade my brothers 
to receive and preach, — the gospel of a person 
for persons, — the gospel of Jesus, bringer of 
that eternal light which is the life of men. 

The second book in this volume. The Gospel 
for a World of Sin , consists of lectures and uni- 
versity sermons delivered at Harvard, Prince- 
ton, and other colleges in 1897 and 1898. I 
felt, more and more, (and friends deepened this 
feeling by their frank criticism,) that the first 
lectures were incomplete. They dealt chiefly 
with the difficulties which religion presents to 
the mind, and not enough with those burdens 
which the sense of sin lays upon the heart. 
Most men, at some time, are doubters. But all 
men are sinners, and that is what makes them 
restless and unhappy. The mystery of evil, — 
the saving power of the Cross, — to leave these 
out is to miss the full meaning of the gospel. 

But I have not tried to define that vital truth 


IX 


PREFACE 


which is known to theologians as the doctrine 
of the atonement. No definition is sufficient. 
It is beyond words. It is the crowning act of 
the human life of God. It is the unsearchable 
glory of divine self-sacrifice. 

In these dark days that follow the dark war, 
we see from the valley of vision the light of 
the cross on the hill. If God could not suffer 
he would be far from man. Christ giving him- 
self for the world is the wisdom, power, and 
love of the Eternal to everyone that believeth. 

Henry van Dyke. 

Avalon, December 8, 1920. 


X 


CONTENTS 


I. 

BOOK I 

THE GOSPEL FOR AN AGE OF DOUBT 

An Age of Doubt 

3 

II. 

The Gospel of a Person 

36 

III. 

The Unveiling of the Father 

70 

IV. 

The Human Life of God 

108 

V. 

The Source of Authority in the King- 



dom of Heaven 

144 

VI. 

Liberty 

175 

VII. 

Sovereignty 

211 

VIII. 

Service 

241 

I. 

BOOK II 

THE GOSPEL FOR A WORLD OF SIN 

The Mist and the Gulf 

277 

II. 

The Sin of the World 

284 


I. The Presence of Evil 
II. The Unanswerable Question 

III. The Sense of Sin 

IV. The Hopeful Fear 


XI 


CONTENTS 


III. The Bible without Christ 317 



I. 

The Unbroken Shadow 



II. 

The Intolerable Light 


IV. 

Christ’s Mission to the Inner Life 

351 


I. 

The Kingdom is within You 



II. 

The Picture of Jesus in the Soul 



III. 

Peace with God through Christ 



IV. 

Newness of Life 


V. 

The 

Fulness of Atonement 

388 


I. 

The Love that Meets All Needs 



II. 

The Love that Passeth Knowledge 


VI. 

The 

Message of the Cross 

423 


Xll 


BOOK I 


THE GOSPEL FOR AN AGE OF 
DOUBT 



AN AGE OF DOUBT 


PT1HERE is one point in which all men resem- 
A ble each other: it is that they are all dif- 
ferent. But their differences are not fixed and 
immutable. They are variable and progressive. 
Types of character survive or perish, like the 
forms of animal life. 

Thus it comes to pass that underneath all 
the diversities of individual life, we may dis- 
cern vaguely the features of a Zeitgeist , a spirit 
of the time. Generations differ almost as much 
as the men who compose them. There is a per- 
sonal equation in every age. 

To know this is a necessity for the preacher. 
Even as the physician must apprehend the idio- 
syncrasy of his patient, and the teacher must 
recognize the quality of his pupil, so must the 
preacher be in touch with his age. 

In endeavouring to arrive at this knowledge, 
contact with the world is of the first conse- 
quence. For one who desires to make men and 
women what they ought to be, nothing can 
take the place of an acquaintance with men 
and women as they are. 

3 


AN AGE OF DOUBT 

One means of obtaining this acquaintance is 
through literature, — not that highly specialized 
and more or less technical variety of literature 
which is produced expressly for certain classes 
of readers, but literature in the broader sense, 
including contemporary history and criticism, 
poetry and fiction, popular philosophy and di- 
luted science. This kind of literature is the ex- 
pression of the Zeitgeist It is at once a prod- 
uct, and a cause, of the temperament of the 
age. In it we see not only what certain men 
have written by way of comment on the move- 
ment of the times, but also what a great many 
men are reading while they move. It expresses, 
and it creates, a spirit, an attitude of mind. “I 
do not imagine,” says Paul Bourget, “that I am 
announcing an altogether novel truth in affirm- 
ing that literature is one of the elements of the 
ethical life, — the most important perhaps; for 
in the decline, more and more evident, of tra- 
ditional and local influences, the book is taking 
its place as the great initiator.” 

A course in modern novels and poetry might 
well be made a part of every scheme of prepara- 
tion for the ministry. The preacher who does 
not know what his people are reading does not 
know his people. He will miss the significance 
of the current talk of society, and even of the 
4 


AN AGE OF DOUBT 


daily comments of the newspapers, (a cheap sub- 
stitute for conversation,) unless he has the key 
to it in the tone of popular literature. It is 
from this source that I have drawn many of the 
illustrations for this lecture. If they appear un- 
familiar or out of place in a theological semi- 
nary, I can only say that they seem to me none 
the less, but perhaps the more, significant and 
valuable on that account. For I think that one 
of the causes by which, as John Foster wrote 
seventy years ago, “ Evangelical Religion has 
been rendered unacceptable to persons of culti- 
vated taste,” has been a certain ill-disguised 
contempt on the part of persons of orthodox 
opinions for what they are pleased to call, 
“mere belles-lettres' 9 The preacher who wishes 
to speak to this age must read many books in 
order that he may be in a position to make the 
best use of what Sir Walter Scott called “the 
one Book.” He must keep himself in touch 
with modern life by studying modern litera- 
ture, which is one of its essential factors. 

I 

As soon as we step out of the theological cir- 
cle into the broad field of general reading we see 
that we are living in an age of doubt. [1896.] 

I do not mean to say that this is the only 

5 


AN AGE OF DOUBT 


feature in the physiognomy of the age. It has 
many other aspects, from any one of which we 
might pick a name. From the material side, 
we might call it an age of progress; from the 
intellectual side, an age of science; from the 
medical side, an age of hysteria; from the polit- 
ical side, an age of democracy; from the com- 
mercial side, an age of advertisement; from the 
social side, an age of publicomania. But look- 
ing at it from the spiritual side, which is the 
preacher’s point of view, and considering that 
interior life to which every proclamation of a 
gospel must be addressed, beyond a doubt it 
stands confessed as a doubting age. 

There is a profound and wide-spread unsettle- 
ment of soul in regard to fundamental truths of 
religion, and also in regard to the nature and 
existence of the so-called spiritual faculties by 
which alone these truths can be perceived. In 
its popular manifestations, this unsettlement 
takes the form of uncertainty rather than of 
denial, of unbelief rather than of disbelief, of 
general scepticism rather than of specific in- 
fidelity. 

It is not merely that particular doctrines, 
such as the inspiration of the Bible, or the 
future punishment of the wicked, are attacked 
and denied. The preacher who concentrates 
6 


AN AGE OF DOUBT 


his attention at these points will fail to realize 
the gravity of the situation. It is not that a 
spirit of bitter and mocking atheism, such as 
Bishop Butler described at the close of the last 
century, has led people of discernment to set 
up religion “as a principal subject of mirth and 
ridicule, as it were by way of reprisal for its 
having so long interrupted the pleasures of the 
world.” The preacher who takes that view of 
the case now will be at least seventy years too 
late. He will fail to understand the serious 
and pathetic temper of the age. 

The questioning spirit of to-day is severe but 
not bitter, restless but not frivolous; it takes 
itself very seriously and applies its methods of 
criticism, of analysis, of dissolution, with a sad 
courtesy of demeanour, to the deepest and most 
vital truths of religion, the being of God, the 
reality of the soul, the possibility of a future 
life. Everywhere it comes, and everywhere it 
asks for a reason, in the shape of a positive and 
scientific demonstration. When one is given, it 
asks for another, and when another is given, it 
asks for the reason of the reason. The laws of 
evidence, the principles of judgment, the wit- 
ness of history, the testimony of consciousness, 
— all are called in question. The answers which 
have been given by religion to the most difficult 
7 


AN AGE OF DOUBT 


and pressing problems of man’s inner life are 
declared to be unsatisfactory and without foun- 
dation. The question remains unsolved. Is it 
insoluble ? 

The age stands in doubt. Its coat-of-arms 
is an interrogation point rampant, above three 
bishops dormant, and its motto is Query? 

II 

If we inquire the cause of this general scep- 
ticism in regard to religion, the common answer 
from all sides would probably attribute it to 
the progress of science. I do not feel satisfied 
with this answer. At least I should wish to 
qualify it in such a way as to give it a very 
different meaning from that which is implied 
in the current phrase “the conflict between 
science and religion.” 

Science, in itself considered, the orderly and 
reasoned knowledge of the phenomenal universe 
of things and events, ought not to be, and has 
not been, hostile to religion, simply because it 
does not and cannot enter into the same sphere. 
The great advance which has been made in the 
observation and classification of sensible facts, 
and in the induction of so-called general laws 
under which those facts may be arranged for 
purposes of study, has not even touched the 
8 


AN AGE OF DOUBT 


two questions upon the answer to which the 
reality and nature of religion depend: first, the 
possible existence of other facts which physical 
science cannot observe and classify; and second, 
the probable explanation of these facts. 

What has happened is just this. The field in 
which faith has to work has been altered, and 
enormously broadened. But the work remains 
the same. The question is whether faith has 
enough vital energy to face and accomplish it. 
For example, the material out of which to con- 
struct an argument from the evidences of final 
cause in nature has been incalculably increased 
by the discoveries of the last seventy years in 
regard to natural selection and the origin of 
species. The idea of final cause has not been 
touched. Only the region which it must illu- 
minate has been vastly enlarged. It remains 
to be seen whether faith can supply the illumi- 
nating power. Already we have the promise of 
an answer in many books, by masters of science 
and philosophy, who show that the theory of 
evolution demands for its completion the recog- 
nition of the spiritual nature of man and the 
belief in an intelligent and personal God. 

The spread of scepticism is often attributed 
to the growth of our conception of the physical 
magnitude of the universe. The bewildering 
9 


AN AGE OF DOUBT 


number and distances of the stars, the gigan- 
tic masses of matter in motion, and the tremen- 
dous sweep of the forces which drive our tiny 
earth along like a grain of dust in an orderly 
whirlwind, are supposed to have overwhelmed 
and stunned the power of spiritual belief in 
man. The account seems to me incorrect and 
unconvincing. Precisely the same argument was 
used by Job and Isaiah and the Psalmists to 
lead to a conclusion of faith. The striking dis- 
proportion between the littleness of man and 
the greatness of the stars was to them a demon- 
stration of the necessity of religion to solve the 
equation. They saw in the heavens the glory 
of God. And if man to-day knows vastly more 
of the heavens, does not that put him in posi- 
tion to receive a larger and loftier vision of the 
glory? 

We observe, moreover, that it is just in those 
departments of science where the knowledge of 
the magnitude and splendid order of the physi- 
cal universe is most clear and exact, namely, in 
astronomy and mathematics, that we find the 
most illustrious men of science who have not 
been sceptics but sincere and steadfast believ- 
ers in the Christian religion. Kepler and New- 
ton were men of faith. The most brilliant 
galaxy of mathematicians ever assembled at one 
10 


AN AGE OF DOUBT 


time and place was at the University of Cam- 
bridge in the latter half of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. Of these “Sir W. Thomson, Sir George 
Stokes, Professors Tait, Adams, Clerk-Maxwell, 
and Cayley — not to mention a number of lesser 
lights, such as Routh, Todhunter, Ferrers, etc. 
— were all avowed Christians.” Surely it needs 
no further proof to show that the pursuit of 
pure science does not necessarily tend to scep- 
ticism. 

No, we must look more closely and distin- 
guish more clearly in order to discover in the 
scientific activities of the age a cause of the pre- 
vailing doubt. And if we do this I think we 
shall find it in the fallacy of that kind of science 
which mistakes itself for omniscience. 

“What we see is the pretence of certain sci- 
ences to represent in themselves all human 
knowledge. And as outside of knowledge there 
is no longer, in the eyes of science thus cur- 
tailed, any means for man to come in contact 
with the realities, we see the pretence advanced 
by some that all reality and all life should be 
reduced to that which they have verified. Out- 
side of this there are only dreams and illusions. 
This is indeed too much. It is no longer sci- 
ence, but scientific absolutism.” 

“The history of the natural sciences,” said 
11 


AN AGE OF DOUBT 


Du Bois-Reymond in 1877, “is the veritable 
history of mankind.” “The world,” says an- 
other, “is made of atoms and ether, and there 
is no room for ghosts.” M. Berthelot, in the 
preface to his Origines de Valchimie , claims that 
“the world to-day is without mysteries”; mean- 
ing thereby, I suppose, that there is nothing in 
existence, from the crystallization of a diamond 
to the character of a saint, which cannot be in- 
vestigated and explained by means of a cruci- 
ble, a blow-pipe, a microscope, and a few other 
tools. 

This is simply begging the question of a 
spiritual world in the negative. It is a stupefy- 
ing assumption. It is a claim to solve the 
problems of the inner life by suppressing them. 
This claim is not in any sense necessary to the 
existence of science, nor to any degree sup- 
ported by the work which it has actually ac- 
complished. But it is made with a calm assur- 
ance which imposes powerfully upon the popular 
mind; and, being made in the name of science, 
it carries with it an appearance of authority 
borrowed from the great service which science 
has rendered to humanity by its discoveries in 
the sphere of the visible. 

The result of this petitio principii in the 
minds of those who accept it fully and carry 
12 


AN AGE OF DOUBT 


it out to its logical conclusion, is a definite 
system of metaphysical negation which goes 
under the various names of Naturalism, Posi- 
tivism, Empiricism, and Agnosticism. Its re- 
sult in the minds of those who accept it is the 
development of a sceptical temper. Its result 
in the minds of those who are unconsciously 
affected by it, through those profound instincts 
of sympathy and involuntary imitation which 
influence all men, is an attitude, — more or less 
sincere, more or less consistent and continuous, 
— an attitude of doubt. 

The spirit of the age tacitly divides all the 
various beliefs which are held among men into 
two classes. Those which are supported by 
scientific proof must be accepted. Those which 
are not thus supported either must be rejected, 
or may safely and properly be disregarded. 

Ill 

Now this general scepticism, in all its shades 
and degrees, is reflected in current literature. 
Never was literary art more versatile and suc- 
cessful than in the present age. Never have 
its laws been more widely understood and its 
fascinations more potently exercised. Never 
has it evoked more magical and charming forms 
to float above an abyss of nothingness. 

13 


AN AGE OF DOUBT 


In the lay sermons and essays of Huxley and 
Tyndall and Frederic Harrison and W. K. Clif- 
ford, scepticism appears militant and trench- 
ant. These knights-errant of Doubting Castle 
are brilliantly equipped as men of war; and 
even when they fall foul of each other, as they 
often do, the ground of the conflict is an accu- 
sation of infidelity to the principles of unbelief, 
and its object is to drive the adversary back 
into a more complete and consistent negation. 

In the vivid and picturesque historical stud- 
ies of Renan and Froude, scepticism is at once 
ironical and idealistic, destructive and dog- 
matic. In the penetrative and intelligent cri- 
tiques of Scherer and Morley, it adheres with 
proud but illogical persistence to the ethical 
consequences of the faith with which logic has 
broken: like a son disinherited, but resolved to 
maintain the right of possession by the strong 
arm. 

In the novels of unflinching and unblushing 
naturalism, — like those of Zola and Maupassant 
and the later works of Thomas Hardy, scepti- 
cism speaks with a harsh and menacing accent 
of the emptiness of all life and the futility of 
all endeavour. In the psychological romances 
of Flaubert and Bourget and Spielhagen, George 
Eliot and Mrs. Humphry Ward, it holds the 
14 


AN AGE OF DOUBT 


mirror up to human nature to disclose a face 
darkened with inconsolable regret for lost 
dreams. Far apart as Madame Bovary and 
Cosmopolis , Problematische Naturen and Middle- 
march and Robert Elsmere may be in many of 
their features, do they not wear the same ex- 
pression, — the melancholy of disillusion? 

Fiction in its more superficial form, dealing 
only with the manners and customs of the so- 
cial drama, and relying for its interest mainly 
upon local colour and the charm of incident 
narrated with vivacity and grace, betrays its 
scepticism by a serene, unconscious disregard 
of the part which religion plays in real life. In 
how many of the lighter novels of the day do 
we find any recognition, even between the lines, 
of the influence which the idea of God or its 
absence, the practice of prayer or its neglect, 
actually exercise upon the character and con- 
duct of men ? Take, for example, Du Maurier’s 
Trilby , as the type of a clever book carelessly 
written for the public of a passing moment. It 
is incredibly credulous in regard to the dramatic 
possibilities of hypnotism. It is pitifully in- 
adequate in its conception of the actual poten- 
cies of religion; and it uses Christianity chiefly 
as a subject for caricature. 

Poetry has always been the most direct and 
15 


AN AGE OF DOUBT 


intimate utterance of the human heart. And 
it is in poetry that we hear to-day the voice 
of scepticism most clearly, “ making abundant 
music around an elementary nihilism, now 
stripped naked.” Listen to its sonorous chant- 
ings as they come from France in the verse of 
Leconte de Lisle, celebrating the sombre ritual 
of human automata before the altar of the un- 
known and almighty tyrant, who agitates them 
endlessly for his own amusement. Listen to 
its delicate and decadent lyrics, as Charles 
Baudelaire sings his defeat in life and his thirst 
for annihilation. 

“Morne esprit , autrefois amoureux de la lutte , 

L’Espoir dont Veperon attisait ton ardeur 

Ne veut plus f enfourcher. Couche-toi sans pudeur , 

Vieux cheval dont le pied a chaque obstacle butte. 

RSsigne-toi, mon cceur , dors ton sommeil de brute. 

Et le Temps mJengloutit minute par minute 
Comme la neige immense un corps pris de roideur : 

Je contemple d y en haul le globe en sa rondeur 
Et je n'y cherche plus Vabri d’une cahute I 

Avalanche , veux tu m’emporter dans ta chute ?” 

Turn to England and hear its musical con- 
fession in the cool, sad tones of Matthew 
16 


AN AGE OF DOUBT 


Arnold, no enemy of faith, but her disen- 
chanted lover. 

“Forgive me, masters of the mind. 

At whose behest I long ago 

So much unlearned , so much resigned — 

I come not here to be your foe; 

I seek these anchorites not in ruth , 

To curse and to deny your truth; 

Not as their friend, or child, 1 speak 
But as on some far northern strand. 

Thinking of his own gods , a Greek, 

In pity and mournful awe might stand 
Before a fallen Runic stone , — 

For both were faiths, and both are gone” 

There is a poem by Tennyson (who never 
broke with faith, though he felt the strain of 
doubt), in which he describes with intense 
dramatic sympathy the finality of scepticism 
in the human soul. It is called “Despair.” 
There is another poem, called “Sea Dreams,” 
in which he gives a vision of the rising tide of 
doubt as it threatens to undermine and over- 
whelm the beliefs of the past. The woman is 
telling her husband the dream which came to her 
in the night as she watched by their sick child. 

“But round the North, a light, 

A belt, it seem'd, of luminous vapour , lay, 

17 


AN AGE OF DOUBT 


And ever in it a low musical note 
Swell’ d up and died ; and , as it swell’ d, a ridge 
Of breaker issued from the belt , and still 
Grew with the growing note , and when the note 
Had reach’d a thunderous fulness , on those cliffs 
Broke , mixt with awful light ( the same as that 
Living within the belt) whereby she saw 
That all those lines of cliffs were cliffs no more. 

But huge cathedral fronts of every age. 

Grave, florid, stern, as far as eye could see. 

One after one : and then the great ridge drew. 

Lessening to the lessening music, back. 

And passed into the belt and swell’ d again 

Slowly to music : ever when it broke 

The statues, king, or saint, or founder, fell ; 

Then from the gaps and chasms of ruin left 
Came men and women in dark clusters round. 

Same crying, ‘ Set them up l they shall not fall!’ 

And others, ‘Let them lie, for they have fall’ n . 9 
And still they strove and wrangled : . . . 

. . . and ever as their shrieks 
Ban highest up the gamut, that great wave 
Returning, while none mark’d it, on the crowd 
Broke, mixt with awful light, and show’d their eyes 
Glaring, and passionate looks, and swept away 
The men of flesh and blood, and men of stone. 

To the waste deeps together ’’ 

It was only a dream, but how many souls 
have felt the vague sadness, the haunting, help- 
less pity and fear of a like vision, looking out 
upon the landscape of man’s inner life, and see- 
18 


AN AGE OF DOUBT 


ing the ancient landmarks slowly melted or 
swiftly swept away, the shrines of memory 
shaken and removed, the fair images of im- 
mortal desire and aspiration dissolving and dis- 
appearing in the onward waves, silently creep- 
ing, or surging with mysterious and inarticulate 
music out of the waste deep of doubt, — 

“ The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea." 

Who can think of the sharp anguish and dull 
grief that have fallen upon innumerable hearts 
through the loss of their most precious faith; 
who can think of the gray, formless, ever-mov- 
ing, yet immovable flood of mordant gloom 
that has covered so many once bright fields of 
human hope, so many once peaceful homes of 
human trust and confidence, — who can think 
of these things, even though his own stand- 
point be still untouched, his own faith-dwelling 
founded upon a rock far above the tide, with- 
out a sorrowful perturbation of spirit and a 
deep, inward sense of compassionate distress 
and dread? We stand upon the shore, but we 
stand beside the sea. And we look out upon 
it, as Emile Littre sadly wrote, like the women 
of Troy, whom the Roman poet pictured gaz- 
ing at its mighty currents and engulfing waves: 

i( Pontum adspectabant flentes.” 

19 


AN AGE OF DOUBT 


IV 

It is with no unsympathetic and condemn- 
ing spirit, that I have tried to draw this picture 
of the sceptical age in which we live. Its faults, 
its perils, are mine and yours. So far as cur- 
rent scepticism has its source in evil, it flows 
from faults of which we all partake, — the pride 
of intellect, the haste of judgment, the prefer- 
ence of the seen to the unseen, the impatience 
of ignorance, and the disloyalty of reason to 
conscience. 

But this is not the point of view from which 
we speak. Doubt, as we are thinking of it, is 
not a crime, but a malady. And if we are to 
have any hope or power of staying its progress 
and healing its ravages, we must not only be 
sympathetic in our understanding of it, but we 
must also look through it, earnestly and pa- 
tiently, to see whether there are not some fa- 
vourable symptoms, some signs of enduring 
vitality, some promises of returning health and 
strength in the spirit of the age. 

Of these it seems to me that there are three, 
so evident and so important, that we ought not 
to overlook them. First, the acknowledged 
discontent and pain of unbelief; second, the 
practical recoil of some of the finest minds 
20 


AN AGE OF DOUBT 


from the void of absolute scepticism; third, 
the persistent desire of many doubting spirits 
to serve mankind by love, self-sacrifice, and 
ethical endeavour. In other words, I would 
read the lesson of encouragement in the suf- 
ferings of doubt, in the doubts of doubt, 
and in the splendid moral inconsistencies of 
doubt. 

Begin, then, with pain, which is not only a 
warning of disease, but also a sign of life. The 
pessimism which goes hand in hand with scep- 
ticism is a cry of suffering. 

It seemed at one time as if the course of 
modern scepticism was to be free from sadness, 
a painless malady. At the beginning of the 
century the tone of infidelity was jubilant and 
triumphant. Percy Bysshe Shelley walked into 
the inn at Montanvert and wrote his name in 
the visitors’ book, adding “ democrat, philan- 
thropist, atheist,” — as if it were a record of 
victory and a title of glory. This cheerful 
type of scepticism still survives, here and there, 
in a few men who insist that the process of dis- 
enchantment is pleasant and joyous, and that 
the optimism which belonged to faith may re- 
main while the faith itself disappears. It is 
like the smile of the Cheshire cat, in the child’s 
story-book, which broadened and brightened 


AN AGE OF DOUBT 


while the cat faded, until finally the animal was 
gone and nothing but the smile was left. 

But for the most part modern doubt shows a 
sad and pain-drawn face, heavy with grief and 
dark with apprehension. There is an illustra- 
tion of this change in the life of George Eliot. 
In her girlhood she passed suddenly, by an un- 
conditional surrender, out of a warm faith in 
Evangelical Christianity into the coldest kind 
of rational scepticism. She writes of the dull, 
and now forgotten, book which wrought this 
change, Charles Hennell’s Inquiry concerning 
the Origin of Christianity , with strange and al- 
most fantastic merriment: “Mr. Hennell ought 
to be one of the happiest of men that he has 
done such a life’s work. I am sure if I had 
written such a book I should be invulnerable 
to all the arrows of all the gods and goddesses. 
The book is full of wit to me. It gives me that 
exquisite kind of laughter which comes from 
the gratification of the reasoning faculties.” 
But the arrows which she despised struck home, 
ere life was ended, to her own heart. 

“I remember,” writes Mr. F. W. H. Myers, 
“how at Cambridge I walked with her once in 
the Fellows’ Garden of Trinity, on an evening 
of rainy May, and she, stirred somewhat be- 
yond her wont, and taking as her text the three 
22 


AN AGE OF DOUBT 


words which have been used so often as the 
inspiring trumpet-calls of men, — the words God, 
Immortality, Duty, — pronounced, with terrible 
earnestness, how inconceivable was the first, 
how unbelievable was the second, and how 
peremptory and absolute the third. Never, 
perhaps, had sterner accents affirmed the sov- 
ereignty of impersonal and unrecompensing 
law. I listened and night fell; her grave, ma- 
jestic countenance turned towards me like a 
Sibyl’s in the gloom; it was as though she with- 
drew from my grasp, one by one, the two scrolls 
of promise, and left me the third scroll only, 
awful with inevitable fate.” 

An inevitable fate, seen through the gloom 
of falling night, — that indeed is the aspect of 
life which the literature of doubt displays to 
us. A gray shadow of melancholy spreads over 
the questioning, uncertain, disillusioned age; 
languid sighs of weariness breathe from its 
salons and palaces. Bitter discontent mutters 
in its workshops and tenements. “ Never, I 
believe,” says Paul Desjardins, “have men 
been more universally sad than in the present 
time.” And then he adds, with keen insight, 
“Our misery lies in feeling that we are less men 
than we were sixty years ago.” Human life 
has been unspeakably impoverished and nar- 
23 


AN AGE OF DOUBT 


rowed by the loss of faith. Comedy has be- 
come tragic, and tragedy has grown mean and 
sordid. Men have lost the sound of a Divine 
voice in the story of their existence and learned 
to listen to it as 

“a tale 

Told by an idiot , full of sound and fury 
Signifying nothing 

Love itself, the great purifier and ennobler, 
has been transformed in the subtle analysis of 
sexual passion, from the sea-born Venus, pure 
and radiant with immortal youth, to a dirt- 
engendered goddess, concealing her secret ugli- 
ness with illusory and artificial charms, and pre- 
siding with malignant power over the lower 
currents of man’s being, — a veritable Cloacina 
of human life. 

The thought of “the grandeur and misery of 
man,” as Pascal conceived it, was painful but 
elevating. The conception of the insignificance 
and misery of man as scepticism presents it, 
is painful and dispiriting. Born of blind force 
and unconscious matter, quickened by some 
mysterious cruelty to a consciousness of his 
own origin and a foreboding of his inexplicable 
and fruitless destiny, he “drees his weird,” 
between two fathomless abysses of gloom, as 
one who is indeed weary and heavy-laden. The 
24 


AN AGE OF DOUBT 


music with which he accompanies his march 
towards the blank and dismal bourn, rolls and 
clashes through the literature of every land 
with deep and mournful discords, as if man 
had at last invented that strange organ of ex- 
pression which a satirist has called “the Mise- 
rophon” 

“This philosophy,” says Stendhal, comment- 
ing upon the last reflections of his hero in Rouge 
et Noir , “was perhaps true, but it was of such 
a nature as to make one long for death.” And 
then the critic from whom I have quoted these 
words, adds his own commentary. “Do you 
perceive, at the close of this work, the most 
complete which the author has left, the break- 
ing of the tragic dawn of pessimism? It rises, 
this dawn of blood and tears, and, like the clear- 
ness of a new-born day, it overspreads with 
crimson hues the loftiest spirits of our age, those 
whose thoughts are at the summit, those to 
whom the eyes of the men of to-morrow lift 
themselves, — religiously. I am come in this 
series of psychological studies to the fifth and 
last of the personages whom I propose to ana- 
lyse. I have examined a poet, Baudelaire; a 
historian, Renan; a romancer, Flaubert; a 
philosopher, Taine; I have just examined one 
of these composite artists in whom the critic 
25 


AN AGE OF DOUBT 


and the imaginative writer are closely united; 
and I have found in these five Frenchmen of 
such importance, the same philosophy of dis- 
gust with the universal nothingness.” 

If we turn to Russia, which has given us some 
of the most brilliant and influential, though un- 
disciplined, writers of modern fiction, do we 
not hear, in an accent harsher and more formi- 
dable, the same conclusions, the same cries of 
nausea over the inextricable confusion and vain 
efforts of human life? If we turn to England, 
do we not see the same cloud of melancholy, 
less threatening, less angry, but no less dark, 
rising from the chasm which doubt has made 
between man’s inner life and the world as scien- 
tific positivism pictures it? How mournful is 
the voice in which W. K. Clifford proclaims, 
“The Great Companion is dead!” How dark 
with silent, passionate grief is that lonely wood 
in which “Robert Elsmere” feels himself going 
blind to the dearest visions of his former faith. 
How black the air in which “Jude the Obscure” 
breathes out the last throbbings of his insur- 
gent heart in curses upon his sordid and des- 
perate fate ! Let a poet speak the last word of 
doubt, — the epitaph of The City of Dreadful 
Night. The portentous figure of “Melancholia” 
sits enthroned above her vast metropolis. 

26 


AN AGE OF DOUBT 


“ The moving Moon and stars from east to west 
Circle before her in the sea of air ; 

Shadows and gleams glide round her solemn rest. 

Her subjects often gaze up to her there : 

The strong to drink new strength of iron endurance , 

The weak , new terrors ; all , renewed assurance 
And confirmation of the old despair ” 

But why despair, unless indeed because man, 
in his very nature and inmost essence, is framed 
for an immortal hope? No other creature is 
filled with disgust and anger by the mere recog- 
nition of its own environment and destiny. 
This strange issue of a purely physical evolu- 
tion in a profound revolt against itself is in- 
credibly miraculous. Can a vast universe of 
atoms and ether, unfolding out of darkness into 
darkness, produce at some point in its progress, 
and that point apparently the highest, a feel- 
ing of profound disappointment with its par- 
tially discovered processes and resentful grief 
at its dimly foreseen end? To believe this 
would require a monstrous credulity ! 

Atheism does not touch this difficulty. Ag- 
nosticism evades it. There are but two solu- 
tions which really face the facts. One is the 
black, unspeakable creed that the source of all 
things is an unknown, mocking, malignant 
Power, whose last and most cruel jest is the 
27 


AN AGE OF DOUBT 


misery of disenchanted man. The other is the 
hopeful creed that the very pain which man 
suffers when his spiritual nature is denied, is 
proof that it exists, and part of the discipline 
by which a truthful, loving God would lead 
man to himself. Let the world judge which is 
the more reasonable faith. But for our part, 
while we cling to the creed of hope, let us not 
fail to “ cleave ever to the sunnier side of 
doubt,” and see in the very shadow that it 
casts the evidence of a light behind and above 
it. Let us learn the meaning of that noble word 
of St. Augustine: Thou hast made us for Thy- 
self , and unquiet is our heart until it rests in Thee . 

The inquietude of the heart which doubt 
has robbed of its faith in God, is an evidence 
that scepticism is a malady, not a normal state. 
The sadness of our times under the pressure 
of positive unbelief and negative uncertainty 
has in it the promise and potency of a return 
to health and happiness. Already we can see, 
if we look with clear eyes, the signs of what I 
have dared to call “the reaction out of the heart 
of a doubting age towards the Christianity of 
Christ and the faith in Immortal Love.” 

Pagan poets, full of melancholy beauty and 
vague regret for lost ideals, poets of decadence 
and despondence, the age has born, to sing its 
28 


AN AGE OF DOUBT 

grief and gloom. But its two great singers, 
Tennyson and Browning, strike a clearer note 
of returning faith and hope. Pessimists like 
Hartmann work back unconsciously, from the 
vague remoteness of pantheism, far in the di- 
rection, at least, of a theistic view of the uni- 
verse. His later books — Religionsphilosophie and 
Selbstersetzung des Christenthums — breathe a dif- 
ferent spirit from his Philosophic des Unbe - 
wussten. A statesman, like Signor Crispi, does 
not hesitate to cut loose from his former 
atheistic connections and declare that “the 
belief in God is the fundamental basis of the 
healthy life of the people, while atheism puts 
in it the germ of an irreparable decay.” The 
French critic, M. Edouard Rod, declares that 
“only religion can regulate at the same time 
human thought and human action.” Mr. Ben- 
jamin Kidd, from the side of English sociology, 
assures us that “since man became a social 
creature, the development of his intellectual 
character has become subordinate to the de- 
velopment of his religious character,” and con- 
cludes that religion affords the only permanent 
sanction for progress. A famous biologist, 
Romanes, who once professed the most abso- 
lute rejection of revealed religion, thinks his 
way soberly back from the painful void to a 
29 


AN AGE OF DOUBT 


position where he confesses that “it is reason- 
able to be a Christian believer,” and dies in the 
full communion of the church. 

All along the line, we see men who once 
thought it necessary or desirable to abandon 
forever the soul’s abode of faith in the unseen, 
returning by many and devious ways from the 
far country of doubt, driven by homesickness 
and hunger to seek some path which shall at 
least bring them in sight of a Father’s house. 

And meanwhile we hear the conscience, the 
ethical instinct of mankind, asserting itself 
with splendid courage and patience, even in 
those who have as yet found no sure ground 
for it to stand upon. There is a sublime con- 
tradiction between the positivist’s view of man 
as “the hero of a lamentable drama played in 
an obscure corner of the universe, in virtue of 
blind laws, before an indifferent nature, and 
with annihilation for its denouement,” and 
the doctrine that it is his supreme duty to sacri- 
fice himself for the good of humanity. Yet 
many of the sceptical thinkers of the age do 
not stumble at the contradiction. They hold 
fast to love and justice and moral enthusiasm 
even though they suspect that they themselves 
are the products of a nature which is blind and 
dumb and heartless and stupid. Never have 
30 


AN AGE OF DOUBT 


the obligations of self-restraint, and helpful- 
ness, and equity, and universal brotherhood 
been preached more fervently than by some 
of the English agnostics. 

In France a new crusade has risen; a cru- 
sade which seeks to gather into its hosts men 
of all creeds and men of none, and which pro- 
claims as its object the recovery of the sacred 
places of man’s spiritual life, the holy land in 
which virtue shines forever by its own light, 
and the higher impulses of our nature are in- 
spired, invincible, and immortal. On its ban- 
ner M. Paul Desjardins writes the word of Tol- 
stoi, “II f aid avoir une ante; it is necessary to 
have a soul,” and declares that the crusaders 
will follow it wherever it leads them. “For my 
part,” he cries, “I shall not blush certainly to 
acknowledge as sole master the Christ preached 
by the doctors. I shall not recoil if my 
premisses force me to believe, at last, as Pascal 
believed.” 

In our own land such a crusade does not yet 
appear to be necessary. The disintegration of 
faith under the secret processes of general scep- 
ticism has not yet gone far enough to make 
the peril of religion evident, or to cause a new 
marshalling of hosts to recover and defend the 
forsaken shrines of man’s spiritual life. When 
31 


AN AGE OF DOUBT 


the process which is now subtly working in so 
many departments of our literature has gone 
farther, it may be needful to call for such a 
crusade. If so, I believe it will come. I be- 
lieve that the leaders of thought, the artists, 
the poets of the future, when they stand face 
to face with the manifest results of negation 
and disillusion, which really destroy the very 
sphere in which alone art and poetry can live, 
will rise to meet the peril, and proclaim anew 
with one voice the watchword, “It is necessary 
to have a soul! And though a man gain the 
whole world, if his soul is lost, it shall profit 
him nothing.’’ But meanwhile, before we come 
to that point of spiritual impoverishment where 
we must imitate the organized and avowed 
effort to recover that which has been lost, we 
see a new crusade of another kind: a powerful 
movement of moral enthusiasm, of self-sacri- 
fice, of altruism, even among those who pro- 
fess to be out of sympathy with Christianity, 
which is a sign of promise, because it reveals 
a force that cries out for Christian faith to guide 
and direct it. 

Never was there a time when the fine aspira- 
tions of the young manhood and young woman- 
hood of our country needed a more inspiring 
and direct Christian leadership. The indica- 
32 


AN AGE OF DOUBT 

tions of this need lie open to our sight on every 
side. Here is a company of refined and edu- 
cated people going down to make a college set- 
tlement among the poor and ignorant, to help 
them and lift them up. They declare that it is 
not a religious movement, that there is to be 
no preaching connected with it, that the only 
faith which it is to embody is faith in human- 
ity. They choose a leader who has only that 
faith. But they find, under his guidance, that 
the movement will not move, that the work 
cannot be done, that it faints and fails because 
it lacks the spring of moral inspiration which 
can come only from a divine and spiritual faith. 
And they are forced to seek a new leader who, 
although he is not a preacher, yet carries with- 
in his heart that power of religious conviction, 
that force of devotion to the will of God, that 
faith in the living and supreme Christ, which 
is in fact the centre of Christianity. All around 
the circle of human doubt and despair, where 
men and women are going out to enlighten and 
uplift and comfort and strengthen their fellow- 
men under the perplexities and burdens of life, 
we hear the cry for a gospel. All through the 
noblest aspirations and efforts and hopes of our 
age of doubt, we feel the longing, and we hear the 
demand, for a new inspiration of Christian faith. 

33 


AN AGE OF DOUBT 


These are the signs of the times. We must 
take note of them, we must labour and pray 
to understand their true significance, if we are 
to say anything to our fellow-men which shall 
be worth our saying and their hearing. 

Renan made a strange remark not long be- 
fore his death: “I fear that the work of the 
Twentieth Century will consist in taking out 
of the waste-basket a multitude of excellent 
ideas which the Nineteenth Century has heed- 
lessly thrown into it.” The sceptic’s fear is 
the believer’s hope. Once more the fields are 
white unto the harvest. The time is ripe; ripe 
in the sorrow of scepticism, ripe in the return 
of aspiration, ripe in the enthusiasm of hu- 
manity, for a renaissance of the spiritual life. 

Already the horizon brightens with the tokens 
of this renaissance. There is a new interest in 
religion as the most living of all topics. There 
is a new sense of its vital meaning for the whole 
life of man. There is a new determination to 
apply it all around the circle of human respon- 
sibilities and test its value everywhere. There 
is a new cry for a Christ who shall fulfil the 
hopes of all the ages. There is a new love wait- 
ing for him, a new devotion ready to follow 
his call. Doubt, in its nobler aspect, — honest, 
unwilling, morally earnest doubt, — has been a 
34 


AN AGE OF DOUBT 


John the Baptist to prepare the way for his 
coming. The men of to-day are saying, as cer- 
tain Greeks said to apostles of old, “Sirs, we 
would see Jesus.” The disciple who can lead 
the questioning spirits to him, is the man who 
has the Gospel for an Age of Doubt. 


35 


II 

THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 


fT'HE prevalence and the quality of modern 
A doubt, with its discontent and sadness, its 
misgivings and reactions, its moral inconsis- 
tencies and fine enthusiasms, bring the preacher 
who is alive and in earnest, face to face with 
the most important question of his life. What 
can I do, what ought I to do, to meet the 
strange, urgent, complicated needs of such a 
time as this ? 

First of all, as a man, — and every preacher 
ought to be a man, though not every man is 
bound to be a preacher — as a man, it is neces- 
sary to lead a clean, upright, steadfast, useful 
life, lifted above all selfishness, and especially 
above that form of religious selfishness which 
is the besetting peril of those who feel them- 
selves rich in faith in the midst of a generation 
that has been made poor by unbelief. Never 
has there been a time when character and con- 
duct counted for more than they do to-day. 
A life on a high level, yet full of helpful, heal- 
36 


THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 


ing sympathy for all life on its lowest levels, 
is the first debt which we owe to our fellow- 
men in this age. 

But beyond this, is there not something per- 
sonal and specific which the conditions of the 
present demand from us, as men who have not 
only the common duty of living, but also the 
peculiar vocation of speaking directly and con- 
stantly to the inner life of our brothers? 

The moment we look at the problem in this 
light, we see that there are various lines of ac- 
tivity open to us, and along all of these lines 
men are making promises and prophecies of use- 
fulness and success. The cures which are sug- 
gested for the malady of the age are many and 
diverse. Of some of them we need speak only 
in passing, to recognize that for us, at least, 
they are unsuitable. 

Herr Max Nordau, for example, in his curious 
and chaotic book, Degeneration , diagnoses the 
sickness of modern times as the result, not of 
a loss of faith, but of a fatal increase of nervous 
irritability produced by the strain of an in- 
tricate civilization. He declares that the mal- 
ady must run its course, but that in time it 
will be healed by the restorative force of 
“ misoneism , that instinctive, invincible aver- 
sion to progress and its difficulties that Lom- 
37 


THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 


broso has studied so much and to which he 
has given this name/’ 

The name is certainly not a pretty one, nor 
do I think that, after the first feeling of plea- 
sure in learning to pronounce a newly imported 
word has passed, the contemplation of its mean- 
ing will afford us any profound sense of satis- 
faction or hope. The picture of mankind as 
a magnified Jemmy Button, returning from his 
temporary residence in England to his native 
Terra del Fuego , and flinging away his gloves and 
patent-leather shoes, to relapse into a peaceful 
and contented barbarism, is not inspiring. Who 
is there that would care to devote his life to 
the hastening of such a result? Who but the 
veriest quack, himself affected by the hysteria 
of the age, would think of curing the convul- 
sions of St. Vitus’ dance in an overstrained 
humanity by throwing the patient into the 
stupor of typhoid fever ? 

Another and very different method of deal- 
ing with the malady of the times is suggested 
by those who believe that Science itself, in the 
immense future advance which is predicted for 
it, will supply the antidote for the scepticism 
which has accompanied its previous course. 
New discoveries will be made which will sup- 
port the proposition: II faut avoir une ante. 

38 


THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 

New arguments will be constructed which will 
give us a scientific demonstration of the un- 
seen universe and the future life. It is in this 
spirit that Mr. F. W. H. Myers calls attention 
to the phenomena of mesmerism and hypnotism 
and telepathy, and suggests that the need of 
the age is a more cordial and general interest 
in the investigations of the Society of Psychical 
Research. I do not think, for one, that these 
investigations are to be slighted or despised. 
They may be of great value. But it is difficult 
to believe that this is the source to which the 
preacher is to look either for his inspiration or 
his message. For, in the first place, it is highly 
improbable that science is about to make any 
such astonishing advance, either in methods or 
results, as some men anticipate. The best au- 
thorities admit this, and warn us that there 
are “limitations in the nature of the universe 
which must circumscribe the achievements of 
speculative research.” Mr. Myers himself 
makes the same admission, and says that so 
far as our discoveries are confined to the phys- 
ical side of things, there is no ground whatever 
for sanguine hope. Moreover, in the second 
place, whatever work may be done in this di- 
rection must be accomplished, not by preachers, 
but by scientists. The average preacher has 
39 


THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 


no particular vocation, and no adequate qual- 
ification, for the task. Neither by tempera- 
ment nor by training is he fitted to judge of 
these matters. Now and then you will find a 
rare exception; but as a rule nothing could 
be of less value than the scientific sermons of 
preachers who have only a bowing acquain- 
tance with science. If the cure of modern scep- 
ticism is to be accomplished by the further 
progress of physical investigation, at least we 
must confess that this enterprise is not for us. 

But there are two other ways of dealing with 
current doubt which demand closer attention. 
One of them is the philosophic method of a 
reductio ad absurdum. The logic of rationalism 
is applied to its own premisses in order to show 
that they are unfounded and unverifiable. The 
result of this attack, as it has been made with 
a relentless and masterly hand by Mr. Arthur 
James Balfour in his Defence of Philosophic 
Doubt , is to exhibit the startling fact that “the 
universe as represented to us by science is 
wholly unimaginable, and that our conception 
of it is what in theology would be termed purely 
anthropomorphic.” The evidence for the exist- 
ence of a world composed of atoms and ether 
is no more conclusive, the account which science 
gives of their nature and qualities is no more 
40 


THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 


coherent, than the evidence and account which 
faith gives of a world created by a personal 
God and inhabited by immortal souls. Pure 
agnosticism is thus forced into the service of 
Christianity and used to destroy all a 'priori 
objections to it. Giant Doubt is brought low 
by turning his own weapons against himself, 
even as Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, slew the 
Egyptian “with his own spear . 55 1 

The value of this service of philosophy is 
considerable. The Christian preacher ought 
not to be ignorant of its actual results, for they 
are such as to encourage him in preserving his 
independence against the tyrannous claims of 
positivism; nor unfamiliar with its methods, 
for they are fitted to train and discipline his 
mind by hard exercise and exact work. But it 
must be remembered that only a mighty man 
of valour, one who, like Benaiah, ranks above 
the host, and above the thirty captains of the 
host, can hope to play a leading part in this 
enterprise of “carrying the war into Africa . 55 
It must be remembered also that the reduction 
of scientific naturalism to an absurdity falls far 
short of the establishment of religious faith as 
a verity. Grateful for all that philosophy can 
do, and is doing, to clear the way, the preacher 

1 1 Chron. 11 : 23. 

41 


THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 


must have a principle, an impulse, a line of 
action which will carry him beyond the nega- 
tive result of making unbelief doubtful, to the 
positive result of making belief credible. 

At this point our attention is called to an- 
other way of dealing with current scepticism, 
— the dogmatic method, which relies for the de- 
fence of faith upon the construction of a com- 
plete and consistent system of doctrine in re- 
gard to God and man, the present world and 
the future life. Faith, in other words, is to 
be established by fortification, surrounded and 
entrenched with banquette and parapet, scarp 
and ditch and counterscarp of iron-worded 
proof, defended on every side by solid syllo- 
gisms, and impregnable against all assaults of 
unbelief. It is foolish not to recognize the great 
work which has been done along this line by 
wise and strong men in the past. Those who 
affect to despise it and make light of it, are 
simply ignorant of some of the loftiest achieve- 
ments of the human intellect. The works of 
Augustine and Anselm and Thomas Aquinas, 
of John Calvin and Richard Hooker and John 
Owen, of Ralph Cudworth and William Chil- 
lingworth, of Richard Baxter and Samuel Clarke 
and Joseph Butler, of Jonathan Edwards and 
Charles Hodge and W. G. T. Shedd, are mas- 
42 


THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 


sive works. They impose a sense of wonder 
upon every thoughtful observer. 

But concerning the attempt to conquer mod- 
em doubt by a system of dogmatic theology, 
certain things must be remembered. The con- 
ditions of warfare change from age to age. The 
vast fortresses of solid stone whose possession 
was once regarded as the security of nations, 
are not ranked so high as they were a hundred 
years ago. The earthwork, the rifled cannon, 
the iron-clad ship, the torpedo, have wrought 
great changes. Deductive logic is just as strong 
as it ever was, but somehow or other men are 
not as much impressed by it. Induction is the 
method of to-day: and that is a subtle, evasive, 
mobile method. It cannot be shut in by a ring 
of fortresses. Already the dogmatic systems 
in which the inductive method is ignored or 
subordinated (whether made long ago, or con- 
structed yesterday on ancient models) are out 
of date. They are good for the men who are 
within them, but on the outside world they have 
no more effect than Windsor Castle would have 
in protecting England from a foreign invasion. 

We feel sure that theology, in time, must 
and will vindicate its claim to be considered as 
an essential factor in the intellectual life of 
man, by adapting itself to the changed condi- 
43 


THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 

tions, and producing even mightier works by 
the new methods than those which it produced 
by the old. Already we see the promise of a 
renaissance of dogmatics in such books as Mul- 
ford’s The Republic of God , Harris’ The Self- 
Revelation of God, Orr’s The Christian View of 
God and the World, and Fairbairn’s The Place 
of Christ in Modern Theology . But we must 
remember that even those who anticipate and 
predict this reconstruction of the old truth on 
the new lines most enthusiastically, recognize 
that it must be a long and difficult task, and 
that the man who is to be a master-builder 
must have a magnificent equipment. How ex- 
hilarating at the first sight, but at the second 
sight how overwhelming and discouraging, are 
the demands of the age upon him who would 
fain be an epoch-making theologian, as they 
are stated, for example, in Mr. Balfour’s Foun- 
dations of Belief, or in Dr. George A. Gordon’s 
inspiring book The Christ of To-day . Truly it 
appears that such a man must realize the sup- 
position of St. Paul: he must speak with the 
tongues of men and of angels, and have the 
gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries 
and all knowledge. Who is sufficient for these 
things? It will take a long time for the best 
of us to learn all this. Perhaps the most of us 
44 


THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 

may never go so far. Meantime we need some- 
thing divinely simple and true that we can 
preach at once, directly, joyfully, fervently to 
the heart of the age. 

We look out upon the world and we see that 
some men have had such a gospel without be- 
ing in any sense finished and systematic theo- 
logians. St. Paul and St. Peter and St. John 
had it. St. Chrysostom and St. Francis of As- 
sisi and Savonarola had it. John Wesley and 
George Whitfield had it. In different ages and 
under different conditions these preachers had 
the primal message which moves men to be- 
lieve. And in our own age, under our own con- 
ditions, a like message has been proclaimed 
with power. Pere Lacordaire preached such a 
message in Notre Dame, and Canon Liddon in 
St. Paul’s, to listening thousands. Phillips 
Brooks made it thrill like a celestial music 
through the young manhood of America; and 
Dwight L. Moody has spoken it with vigorous 
directness in every great city that knows the 
English tongue. In many things, in ecclesias- 
tical relation, in theological statement, in dress, 
in manner, in language, these preachers are 
unlike. One thing only is the same in all of 
them, and that is the source of their power. 
Their central message, the core of their preach- 
45 


THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 


in g, is the personal gospel of Jesus of Nazareth, 
the Son of God and Saviour of mankind. This, 
in its simplest form; this, in its clearest expres- 
sion; this presentation of a person to persons 
in order that they may first know, and then 
love and trust and follow him — this is pre-emi- 
nently the gospel for an age of doubt. 

I 

The adaptation of our central message, thus 
conceived and thus expressed, to meet the pecu- 
liar needs of a time of general scepticism, is the 
theme of this lecture. I do not say that this is 
the whole of Christianity. I do not say that 
when the preacher has delivered this message 
in this form he has fulfilled all of his duties. He 
may have to bear testimony against errors of 
thought and vices of conduct; he is certainly 
bound to give encouragement and guidance to 
new efforts of virtue and new enterprises of 
benevolence in every field. But his first and 
greatest duty, the discharge of which is to give 
him influence over doubting hearts and strength 
for all his other work, is simply to preach Christ. 

This gospel meets the needs of the present 
time because it is the gospel of a fact. 

Personality is a fact. Indeed we may say 
that it is the aboriginal fact; the source of all 
46 


THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 

perception; the starting-point of all thought; 
the informing and moulding principle of all 
language. “All human observation implies 
that the mind, the T,’ is a thing in itself, a fixed 
point in a world of change, of which world of 
change its own organs form a part. It is the 
same, yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow. It 
was what it is, when its organs were of a differ- 
ent shape and consisted of different matter from 
their present shape and matter. It will be what 
it is, when they have gone through other 
changes.” 

This fact of a rational, free, conscious, per- 
sistent self is the foundation of all sensation 
and of all reflection; it is the basis of physics 
as well as of metaphysics. By contrast it gives 
us our first notion of matter; by resistance, our 
first notion of force; by operation, our first 
notion of causality. It is a necessary assump- 
tion even in the philosophies of agnosticism, 
positivism, and materialism. They cannot move 
a step without it. 

“ They reckon ill who leave me out.” 

To deny personality is to deny the possibility 
of any kind of knowledge and reduce the uni- 
verse to a blank. 

Moreover, it is not only true that the recog- 
47 


THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 


nition of our own personality lies at the root of 
perception and reasoning. It is also true that 
contact with other personalities, conscious, in- 
telligent, free, and persistent like ourselves, is 
the gateway through which we reach the reality 
of all external things. To a solitary mind the 
outward world may be only a dream. But the 
moment two minds come into contact and com- 
munication, it becomes at least a permanent 
possibility of sensation. By comparison and 
contrast with the sensations and experiences of 
others, we verify our own. If it were not for 
this the whole universe would dissolve around 
us like the baseless fabric of a vision. The sub- 
tle analysis of modern science, transforming the 
apparently solid elements into invisible atoms, 
and these atoms into vortex rings in the im- 
palpable and immeasurable ether, throws us 
back, more and more, upon personality, sub- 
jective and objective, as the only thing that 
remains sure and immutable. 

Persons, then, are the most real and substan- 
tial objects of our knowledge. They touch us 
at more points, they affect us in more ways and 
with greater intensity, they fit more closely into 
the faculties and powers of our own being, than 
anything else in the universe. A person who 
has influenced us or our fellow-men leaves a 
48 


THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 

more profound, positive, permanent, and real 
impression than any other fact whatsoever. 
We live as persons in a world of persons, far 
more truly than we live in a world of phenomena 
or laws or ideas. 

Now, in an age that is characterized, as some 
German writer has said, by “a hunger for facts,” 
the gospel of a person, if it is rightly appre- 
hended and preached, ought to have peculiar 
power because it is a factual gospel. We can 
come to those who are under the benumbing 
spell of universal doubt and say: Here is a 
fact, a personality, real and imperishable. It 
is not merely a doctrine that was believed in 
Palestine eighteen hundred years ago. It is 
some one who was born and lived among men. 
It is not merely a theory of God and the soul 
and the future life that sprang up in the East 
in the first century and has strangely spread 
itself over the world. This religion is historical 
in every sense of the word, as the actual fulfil- 
ment of an ancient hope, and the starting-point 
of a new life. 

The person of Jesus Christ stands solid in 
the history of man. He is indeed more sub- 
stantial, more abiding, in human apprehension, 
than any form of matter, or any mode of force. 
The conceptions of earth and air and fire and 
49 


THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 


water change and melt around him, as the 
clouds melt and change around an everlasting 
mountain peak. All attempts to resolve him 
into a myth, a legend, an idea, — and hundreds 
of such attempts have been made, — have drifted 
over the enduring reality of his character and 
left not a rack behind. The result of all criti- 
cism, the final verdict of enlightened common- 
sense, is that Christ is historical. He is such a 
person as men could not have imagined if they 
would, and would not have imagined if they 
could. He is neither Greek myth, nor Hebrew 
legend. The artist capable of fashioning him 
did not exist, nor could he have found the ma- 
terials. A non-existent Christianity did not 
spring out of the air and create a Christ. A 
real Christ appeared in the world and created 
Christianity. This is what we mean by the 
gospel of a fact. 

II 

And here we come at once into sight of the 
second quality of this gospel which is peculiarly 
fitted to meet the needs of a doubting age. 

If it be true that a person is a fact, it is no 
less true that a person is a force. The world 
moves by personality. All the great currents 
of history have flowed from persons. Organi- 

50 


THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 


zation is powerful; but no organization has ever 
accomplished anything until a person has stood 
at the centre of it and filled it with his thought, 
with his life. Truth is mighty and must pre- 
vail. But it never does prevail actually until 
it gets itself embodied, incarnated, in a per- 
sonality. Christianity has an organization. 
Christianity has a doctrine. But the force of 
Christianity, that which made it move and 
lent it power to move the world, is the Person 
at the heart of it, who gives vitality to the or- 
ganization and reality to the doctrine. All the 
abstract truths of Christianity might have come 
into the world in another form, — nay, the sub- 
stance of these truths did actually come into 
the world, dimly and partially through the 
fragmentary religions of the nations, more 
clearly and with increasing, prophetic light 
through the inspired Scriptures of the Hebrews; 
but still the world would not stir, still the truth 
could not make itself felt as a universal force 
in the life of humanity until 

“ The Word had breath , and wrought 

With human hands the creed of creeds , 

In loveliness of perfect deeds , 

More strong than all poetic thought .” 

I think we must get back, in our conception of 
Christianity and in our preaching of it, to this 
51 


THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 


primary position. The origin of its power was, 
and continued to be, and still is, the Person 
Christ. 

This was the secret of his ministry. He him- 
self was the central word of his own preaching. 
He offered himself to the world as the solution 
of its difficulties and the source of a new life. 
He asked men simply to believe in him, to love 
him, to follow him. He called the self-righteous 
to humble themselves to his correction, the sin- 
ful to confide in his forgiveness, the doubting 
to trust his assurance, and the believing to ac- 
cept his guidance into fuller light. To those 
who became his disciples he gave doctrine and 
instruction in many things. But to those who 
were not yet his disciples, to the world, he 
offered first of all himself, not a doctrine, not 
a plan of life, but a living Person. This was 
the substance of his first sermon when he stood 
up in the synagogue at Nazareth and having 
read from the Book of Isaiah the prophecy of 
the Great Liberator, declared unto the people 
“This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your 
ears .” 1 This was the attraction of his uni- 
versal invitation, “Come unto me, all ye that 
labour and are heavy laden and I will give you 
rest .” 2 This was the heart of his summary 

1 St. Luke 4 : 16-21. 2 St. Matt. 11 : 28. 


52 


THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 


of his completed work when he said, “I, if I 
be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men 
unto me.” 1 

We are not considering, at this moment, the 
tremendous implications of such a personal 
self-assertion, unparalleled, I believe, in the 
founder of any other religion. We pass by for 
the present that famous and inevitable alter- 
native, Aut Christus Deus , aut homo non bonus 
est . The point, now, is simply this. As a matter 
of history, setting aside all question of the divine 
inspiration and authority of the Gospels, taking 
them merely as a trustworthy report of a cer- 
tain sequence of events, it is plain that the force 
which started the religion of Jesus was the per- 
son Jesus. Christ was his own Christianity. 
Christ was the core of his own gospel. 

Read on through the other books of the New 
Testament, the Acts and the Epistles, and you 
will see that they are just the record of the 
operation of this force in life and literature. 
It was this that sent the apostles out into the 
world, reluctantly and hesitatingly at first, then 
joyfully and triumphantly, as men driven by 
an irresistible impulse. It was the manifesta- 
tion of Christ that converted them , 2 the love 
of Christ that constrained them , 3 the power of 

1 St. John 12 : 32. 2 Gal. 1:16. 8 2 Cor. 5 : 14. 

53 


THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 


Christ that impelled them . 1 He was their cer- 
tainty 2 and their strength . 3 He was their peace 4 
and their hope . 5 For Christ they laboured and 
suffered ; 6 in Christ they gloried ; 7 for Christ’s 
sake they lived and died . 8 They felt and they 
declared that the life that was in them was his 
life . 9 They were confident that they could do 
all things through Christ which strengthened 
them . 10 The offices of the Church — apostle, 
bishop, deacon, evangelist, — call them by what 
names you will — were simply forms of service 
to him as Master ; 11 the doctrines of the Church 
were simply unfoldings of what she had received 
from him as Teacher ; 12 the worship of the 
Church, as distinguished from that of the Jewish 
Synagogue and the Heathen Temple, was the 
adoration of Christ as Lord . 13 

Now it was precisely this relation of the early 
Church, in her organization and doctrine and 
worship, to the person Christ, held fast in her 
memory as identical with the real Jesus who 
was born in Bethlehem and crucified on Calvary, 
conceived in her faith as still living and present 
with his disciples, — it was this personal anima- 

1 2 Cor. 12:9. 2 2 Tim. 1:12. 3 2 Tim. 2 : 1. 

4 Eph. 2 : 14. 6 Col. 1 : 27. 6 Phil. 3 : 8-10. 

7 Gal. 6:14. 8 2 Cor. 4 : 5, 11. 9 Gal. 2:20. 

10 Phil. 4 : 13. “ Eph. 4 : 8-12. 

12 1 Cor. 11 : 1. 23; 15 : 3. 18 Phil> 2 . 11; x Cor 12 . 3 


54 


THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 


tion of the Church by Christ that gave her in- 
fluence over men. Contrary to all human prob- 
ability, against the prejudice of the Hebrews 
who abhorred the name of a crucified man, 
against the prejudice of the Greeks and Romans 
who despised the name of a common Jew, she 
made her way, not by concealing, but by exalt- 
ing and glorifying, the name of Jesus Christ. 
Indeed, it seems as if her career of conquest 
was actually delayed until that name was taken 
up and written upon her banners. It was in 
Antioch, where the disciples were first called 
Christians , 1 that the missionary enterprise of 
the Church began, and it was from that cen- 
tre, with that title, that she went out to her 
triumph. 

The name of Christ was magical; not as a 
secret incantation, but as the sign of a real per- 
son, known and loved. It enlightened and 
healed and quickened the heart of an age which, 
like our own, was dark and sorrowful and heavy 
with doubt. It was the charm which drew men 
to Christianity out of the abstractions of phi- 
losophy, and the confusions of idolatry dark- 
ened with a thousand personifications but empty 
of all true personality. The music of that name 
rang through all the temple of the Church, and 

1 Acts 11 : 526; 13:1-3. 

55 


THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 


to its harmonies her walls were builded. The 
acknowledgment of that name was the mark 
of Christian discipleship. To confess that 
“ Jesus is the Christ” was the way to enter 
the Church. The symbolism of that name was 
the mark of Christian worship. The central 
rites of the Church were baptism into Christ 
and communion with Christ. Fidelity to his 
name was the crown of Christian martyrdom. 
Unnumbered multitudes of men and women 
and children went down to death because they 
would not deny the Christ. Whatever the early 
Church was and did, beyond a doubt her char- 
acter and her activity were but the resultant 
of the personal influence that flowed from Jesus 
Christ. 

When we turn to follow the history of Chris- 
tianity through the later centuries down to the 
present time, we see that the same thing is true. 
The temporal power of the Bishop of Rome 
doubtless grew out of the union of the Church 
with the Empire. The immense wealth and 
secular authority of ecclesiastics may be traced 
to social and political causes. But the inward, 
vitalizing, self-propagating power of Christian- 
ity as a religion has always come from the per- 
son of Jesus who stands at the heart of it. The 
attraction of its hymns and psalms and spiritual 
56 


THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 

songs, the beauty of its holy days and solemn 
ceremonies, were derived from him who is the 
central figure in praise and prayer. The renais- 
sance of Christian Art sprang from the desire 
to picture to the imagination the visible, ador- 
able form and face of him whom speculative 
theology had so often concealed or obscured. 
The penetrating and abiding fragrance of Chris- 
tian literature resides in those books, like The 
Imitation of Christ , in which the sweetness of 
his character is embalmed forever. The potency 
of Christian preaching comes from, and is mea- 
sured by, the clearness of the light which it 
throws upon the personality of Jesus. Read 
the roll of those in every age whom the world 
has acknowledged as the best Christians, kings 
and warriors and philosophers, martyrs and 
heroes and labourers in every noble cause, the 
purest and the highest of mankind, and you 
will see that the test by which they are judged, 
the mark by which they are recognized, is like- 
ness and loyalty to the personal Christ. Then 
turn to the work which the Church is doing 
to-day in the lowest and darkest fields of hu- 
man life, among the submerged classes of our 
great cities, among the sunken races of heathen- 
dom, and you cannot deny that the force of 
that work to enlighten and uplift, still depends 
57 


THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 

upon the simplicity and reality with which it 
reveals the person of Jesus to the hearts of men. 
Christianity as a missionary religion would be 
fatally crippled if you took out of it the familiar 
story of Jesus and his love. 

“Mr. Darwin,” says Admiral Sir James Sulli- 
van, “had often expressed to me his conviction 
that it was utterly useless to send missionaries 
to such a set of savages as the Fuegians, prob- 
ably the very lowest of the human race. I had 
always replied that I did not believe any human 
beings existed too low to comprehend the sim- 
ple message of the Gospel of Christ. After 
many years he wrote to me that the recent ac- 
count of the mission showed that he had been 
wrong and I right . . . and he requested me 
to forward to the Society an enclosed cheque 
for £5, as a testimony of his interest in their 
good work.” 

Observe, we are not constructing an argu- 
ment. We are only tracing a force, — the force 
that flows from the person of Jesus Christ. The 
more closely, the more powerfully we can feel 
it in ourselves and in others, the more confi- 
dently we can come to a doubting age and say: 
Here is this force, intense, persistent, far-reach- 
ing. It has moved all kinds of men, from the 
highest to the lowest. What do you make of 
58 


THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 

it? What will you do with it? Is it not the 
only thing that can lift and move you out of 
your doubt? For scepticism is just the inertia 
of the soul which stands poised between con- 
trary and mutually destructive theories. From 
that state of impotence there is but one deliver- 
ance, and that is by force, the force of life em- 
bodied in a person. 


Ill 

But the force which proceeds from the person 
of Jesus is not mere power, blind and purpose- 
less. It moves always in a certain direction. 
It carries with itself an evidence of things not 
seen, a substance of things hoped for. 

An aura of wonder and mystery surrounded 
Jesus of Nazareth in his earthly life. All who 
came in contact with him felt it; in love, if 
they desired to believe; in repulsion, if they 
hated to believe. In his presence, faith in the 
invisible, in the soul, in the future life, in God, 
revived and unfolded with new bloom and 
colour. In his presence hypocrisy was silenced 
and afraid, but sincere piety found a voice and 
prayed. This effluence of his character breathes 
from the whole record of his life. It was not 
merely what he said to men about the eternal 
verities that convinced them. It was something 
59 


THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 


in himself, an atmosphere surrounding him, and 
a silent radiance shining from him, that made 
it easier for them to believe in their own spir- 
itual nature and in the Divine existence and 
presence. He drew out of their fallen and neg- 
lected hearts, by some celestial attraction, spon- 
taneous, gentle, irresistible, a new faith and hope 
and love. Where he came a spiritual springtide 
flowed over the landscape of the inner life. 

Faith was not imposed on doubting hearts 
by an external and mechanical process. It 
grew in the warmth that streamed from him. 
It was not merely that men were at their best 
in his company, except, indeed, those who were 
at their worst through sullen resistance and 
malignant alarm at his power. It was that 
men were conscious of something far better 
than their best, a transcendent force, an in- 
fluence from the immeasurable heights above 
them. And to withstand it they must sink 
below themselves, make new falsehoods and 
new negations to bind them down, grapple 
themselves more closely to the base, the earthly, 
the sensual. But if they yielded to that in- 
fluence, it lifted and moved their thoughts in- 
evitably upward. It was not merely what he 
told them of his own sight of spiritual things. 
It was what they saw reflected in his face and 
60 


THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 

form of that loftier, wider outlook. He was 
like one standing on a high peak, reporting of 
the sunrise to men in the dark valley. They 
heard his words. But they saw also upon his 
countenance the glow of dawn, and gleaming 
all about him the incommunicable splendours 
of a new day. 

This was the effect of the personality of Jesus, 
as he stood amid the shadows and uncertainties 
of human life; an effect strangely overlooked 
and ignored, often even beclouded and hidden, 
in much that has been written about him by 
theologians and historians. I do not dream that 
I can put it into words. But I know that it can 
be felt as a reality in the Gospels. And I turn 
back to one who saw him face to face, one who 
touched his hand and leaned upon his bosom, 
for the expression of the soul-uplifting wonder 
of the person of Christ: The Word was made 
flesh and dwelt among us , and we beheld His glory , 
the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father , full 
of grace and truth } 

Nor has this effect vanished from the world 
with the removal of the bodily presence of Jesus. 
It still flows from the picture of his life which 
is preserved in the Gospels, from the image of 
his character as it is formed in the minds of 

i St. John 1 : 14. 

61 


THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 


men. Eliminate, if you please, what is called 
the miraculous element. Make what allow- 
ance you will for the enthusiasm of his disciples. 
There still remains that enthusiasm itself to be 
reckoned with, an enthusiasm which was kindled 
by him alone. There still remains the figure of 
the person of Christ, who never can be expressed 
in terms of matter and force, who never can 
be explained by natural and historical causes, 
who carries us by his own inherent mystery into 
the presence of the spiritual, the divine, the 
supernatural. 

Something of this spiritual light comes from 
every human personality, even the lowliest, in 
so far as it refuses to be summed up in terms of 
sense perception, in so far as it gives evidence, 
by its affections and hopes and fears, of ele- 
ments in man that are not of the dust. But in 
Christ this light is transcendent and unique, 
because he manifestly surpasses the ordinary 
attainments of humanity, because he cannot be 
accounted for by the laws of heredity and en- 
vironment. The more closely we apply these 
laws, the more clearly he shines out above them. 

“The learned men of our day,” says M. Pierre 
Loti in his book, La Galilee , “have endeavoured 
to find a human explication of his mission, but 
they have not yet reached it. . . . Around 
62 


THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 


him, none the less, there still glows a radiance 
of beams which cannot be comprehended.” 

Historically he appears alone, as no great 
man has ever appeared before or since. Heroes, 
teachers, and leaders of men have always been 
seen as central stars in larger constellations, 
surrounded by lesser but kindred lights. Plato 
shines in conjunction with Socrates and Aris- 
totle; Csesar with Pompey and Crassus; Luther 
with Melanchthon and Calvin; Shakespeare 
with Beaumont and Fletcher and Ben Jonson; 
Napoleon surrounded with his brilliant staff of 
marshals and diplomats; Wordsworth among 
the mild glories of the Lake poets. In every 
case, if you search the neighbourhood of a great 
name, you will find not a blank sky, but an en- 
circling galaxy. But Jesus Christ stands in an 
immense solitude. Among the prophets who 
predicted him, among the apostles who testi- 
fied of him, there is none worthy to be compared 
or conjoined with him. It is as if the heavens 
were swept bare of stars; and suddenly, un- 
expected, unaccompanied, the light of lights 
appears alone, in supreme isolation. 

Nor is there anything in his antecedents, 
in his surroundings, to explain his appearance 
and radiance. There was nothing in the soil 
of the narrow Jewish race to produce such 
63 


THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 


an embodiment of pure and universal love. 
There was nothing in the atmosphere of that 
corrupt and sensual age to beget or foster such 
a character of stainless and complete virtue. 
Nor was his own life, — I say it reverently, — 
judged by purely human and natural laws, 
calculated to result in such an evident perfec- 
tion as all men have wonderingly recognized 
in him. The highest type of human piety, the 
excellence of a beautiful soul, has never been 
reached among men without repentance and 
self-abasement. But Jesus never repented, 
never abased himself in shame and sorrow be- 
fore God, never asked for pardon and mercy. 
Alone, among his followers who kneel at his 
command to confess their unworthiness and 
implore forgiveness, he stands upright and lifts 
a cloudless face to heaven in the inexplicable 
glory of piety without penitence. Moral per- 
fection of this kind is not only without a 
parallel; it is also without an approach. Men 
have never attained to it, and there is no way 
for them , to climb thither. We can only look 
up to that perfection, serene, sinless, unsur- 
passable, and feel that here we are in sight of 
something which cannot be expressed except 
by saying that it is the glory of eternal spirit 
embodied in a person. 


64 


THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 


IV 

But the force which resides in the person 
of Jesus is not exhausted in the production of 
this profound impression of its own spiritual 
and transcendent nature. It goes beyond this 
result of a vivid sense of the reality of the un- 
seen. It has in itself a purifying, cleansing 
power, a delivering, uplifting, sanctifying power. 
The Gospel of Christ is the gospel of a person 
who saves men from sin. And herein it comes 
very close to the heart of a doubting age. 

The great and wonderful fact of this experi- 
ence, which can neither be questioned nor fully 
explained, is not involved in the theological 
speculations which have gathered about it. 
The person of Jesus stands out clear and simple 
as a powerful Saviour of sinful men and women. 
In his presence, the publican and the harlot 
felt their hearts dissolve with unutterable rap- 
ture of forgiveness. At his word, the heavy- 
laden were mysteriously loosed from the im- 
ponderable burden of past transgression. He 
suffered with sinners, and even while he suf- 
fered he delivered them from the sharpest of 
all pains, — the pain of conscious and unpar- 
doned evil. He died for sinners, according to 
his own word; and ever since, his cross has been 


THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 


the sign of rescue for humanity. Whatever may 
be the nature of that sublime transaction upon 
Calvary; whatever the name by which men 
call it, — Atonement, Sacrifice, Redemption, Pro- 
pitiation; whatever relations it may have to 
the eternal moral law and to the Divine right- 
eousness, — its relation to the human heart is 
luminous and beautiful. It does take away 
sin. Kneeling at that holy altar, the soul at 
once remembers most vividly, and confesses 
most humbly, and loses most entirely, all her 
guilt. A sense of profound, unutterable relief, 
a sacred quietude, diffuses itself through all 
the recesses of the troubled spirit. Looking 
unto Christ crucified, we receive an assurance of 
sin forgiven, which goes deeper than thought can 
fathom, and far deeper than words can measure. 

“We may not know , we cannot tell 
What pains he had to hear , 

But we believe it was for us 
He hung and suffered there. 

He died that we might he forgiven , 

He died to make us good; 

That we might go at last to heaven , 

Saved hy his precious blood” 

This is not theory, this is not philosophy, 
this is not theology. It is veritable fact. The 
person Jesus, living with men, dying for men, 
66 


THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 


has actually brought this gift of pardon for 
the past and hope for the future, into the heart 
of mankind. And from pure love of him — a 
love which is first of all and most of all a sense 
of gratitude for this immeasurable service — 
have blossomed, often out of the very abysses 
of sin and degradation, the saintliest and sub- 
limest lives that the world has ever seen. 

Now this, as I know from experience, is the 
gospel for doubting men, the gospel of a Person 
who is a fact and a force, an evidence of the un- 
seen, and a Saviour from sin. Will we preach 
it ? Then one thing is necessary for us, a thing 
which might not be necessary, perhaps, if our 
message were of another kind. 

All knowledge, of the world, of human na- 
ture, of books, will be helpful and tributary; 
all gifts, of clear thought, of powerful speech, 
of prudent action, will be valuable and should 
be cultivated; but one thing will be absolutely 
and forever indispensable. 

If we are to preach Christ we must know 
Christ, and know him in such a sense that we 
can say with St. Paul that we are determined 
not to know anything save Jesus Christ and 
him crucified . 1 We must study him in the 

1 1 Cor. 2 : 2. 

67 


THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 

record of his life until his character is more real 
and vivid to us than that of brother or friend. 
We must imagine him with ardent soul, until 
his figure glows before our inward sight, and his 
words sound in our ears as a living voice. We 
must love with his love, and sorrow with his 
grief, and rejoice with his joy, and offer our- 
selves with his sacrifice, so truly, so intensely 
that we can say, as St. Paul said, that we are 
crucified by his cross and risen in his resurrec- 
tion . 1 We must trace the power of his life in 
the lives of our fellow-men, following and realiz- 
ing his triumphs in souls redeemed and sins 
forgiven, until we know the rapture that thrilled 
the breast of St. Bernard, St. Francis, Thomas 
a Kempis, Samuel Rutherford, Robert Mc- 
Cheyne; the chivalrous loyalty that animated 
Henry Havelock, Charles Kingsley, Frederick 
Robertson, Charles Gordon; the deep devotion 
that strengthened David Brainerd, Henry Mar- 
tyn, Coleridge Patteson. We must become the 
brothers of these men through brotherhood 
with Christ. We must kindle our hearts in 
communion with him, by meditation, by prayer, 
and by service, which is the best kind of prayer. 
No day must pass in which we do not do some- 
thing distinctly in Jesus’ name, for Jesus’ sake. 

1 Gal. 2 : 20. 

68 


THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 


We must go where he would go if he were on 
earth. We must try to do what he would do if 
he were still among men. And so, by our fail- 
ure as well as by our effort, by the very con- 
trast between our incompleteness and his per- 
fection, the image of our Companion and our 
saving Lord will grow radiant and distinct with- 
in us. We shall know that potent attraction 
which his person has exercised upon the hearts 
of men, and feel in our breast that overmaster- 
ing sense of loyalty to him which alone can draw 
us to follow him through life and death. 

“ 7 / Jesus Christ is a man , — 

And only a man , — I say 
That of all mankind I cleave to him , 

And to him will I cleave alway. 

If Jesus Christ is a God , — 

And the only God, — I swear 
I will follow him through heaven and hell , 

The earth, the sea, and the air.” 1 

1 Richard Watson Gilder, “Song of a Heathen, sojourning in Galilee, 
A. D. 32 ” 


69 


Ill 

THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 

TN the famous fifteenth chapter of The De- 
A cline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Gibbon, 
who was but a superficial sceptic though a pro- 
found historian, introduces an account of the 
rise and spread of the Christian Religion. He 
attributes its remarkable triumph over the 
established religions of the earth to a series of 
causes which he ironically describes as secon- 
dary, and uniformly treats as primary. He 
exhibits them as in themselves sufficient to 
explain the peculiarly favourable reception of 
the Christian faith in the world, and sets aside 
the question of a possible divine origin as un- 
necessary. With serene self-satisfaction he 
traces the rapid growth of the Christian Church 
to the five following causes: I. The Zeal of 
the Christians, derived from the Jews, — but 
purified from that narrow and unsocial spirit 
which, instead of inviting, had deterred the 
Gentiles from embracing the law of Moses. 
II. The Doctrine of a Future Life, improved 
by every additional circumstance which could 
70 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 

give weight and efficacy to that important 
truth. III. The Miraculous Powers ascribed 
to the primitive Church. IV. The Pure and 
Austere Morals of the Christians. V. The 
Union and Discipline of the Christian Republic , 
which gradually formed an increasing and in- 
dependent state in the heart of the Roman 
empire. 

Now this is a brilliant example of the kind of 
work which was done by the shallow and com- 
placent scepticism of a century ago. But the 
moment we subject it to the more searching 
analysis of the scepticism of the present age, 
it dissolves into a thin and incoherent absurdity. 
For it is evident that, so far from giving an ex- 
planation of the growth of Christianity, Gibbon 
is simply describing some of the phenomena 
which accompanied that growth. What, for 
example, is “the zeal of the Christians” but an 
unilluminating name for a contagious and irre- 
sistible enthusiasm which spread through the 
world in connection with faith in Christ ? What 
is “the union and discipline of the Christian 
republic” but a description, without explana- 
tion, of the organic unfolding of a new, myste- 
rious principle of fellowship ? These alleged 
“causes,” more closely examined, are in fact 
the very things that require to be accounted 
71 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 

for. Instead of clearing up the mystery, they 
increase it. 

By a singular fatality of language, the sceptical 
historian has embodied in the statement of his 
position the demonstration of its insufficiency. 
In each of his causes, and in the relation that 
subsists between them, he has practically sug- 
gested a difficulty which demands another and 
a higher solution of the whole problem. Ex- 
amine his words carefully. 

By what means, human or divine, was the 
zeal of the Christians purified from the narrow 
and unsocial spirit of the Jews ” ? The natural 
history of sects and schisms teaches us that 
their invariable tendency is to intensify rather 
than to eliminate bigotry and exclusiveness. 
Through what influence was the doctrine of a 
future life “ improved by every additional cir- 
cumstance that could give it weight and effi- 
cacy” ? The inevitable course of its human 
development under the guidance of abstract 
philosophy has been towards vagueness, cold- 
ness, and uncertainty; under the guidance of 
concrete superstition, towards puerility and 
crass sensualism. On what grounds were mirac- 
ulous powers ascribed to the early Church? 
They must have been ascribed truly or falsely. 
If truly, there must have been some basis of 
72 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 


fact for them to rest upon. If falsely, the Chris- 
tians themselves were either ignorant, or cog- 
nizant, of the falsehood. Take the former sup- 
position, and you present yourself with the 
inexplicable theory that what Pliny the Younger 
called superstitio prava immodica , and imagined 
would be easily and certainly extirpated, was 
able to hold its own against all the assaults of 
learning and philosophy. Take the latter sup- 
position, and you are forced to the incredible 
assumption that a conscious deception was the 
fountain of highest and strongest moral force 
that the world has ever felt. How then did the 
“pure and austere morals of the Christians” 
come into existence? From a lie, or from a 
truth? If from a truth, what was the nature 
of that truth, in what form was it expressed, 
and how did it win credence? And, finally, 
how did “the Christian republic” succeed in 
maintaining and increasing itself as an inde- 
pendent state in the heart of the Roman em- 
pire ? Every other attempt to do this particular 
thing, by secret philosophic doctrine, or by 
open political organisation, failed, and was 
violently crushed by imperial power, or silently 
dissolved by imperial statesmanship. How was 
it that this one invisible fellowship, this one 
visible organization, lived, and spread, and 
73 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 


stood out at last, serene, complete, and mag- 
nificent, when the time-worn ruins of the em- 
pire crumbled around it? 

The answer to these questions is found in 
the person of Christ. This is not a matter of 
choice. It is a matter of necessity. For if he 
was, as all candid observers will admit, the 
originator and animator of Christianity, then 
to stop short of him in our inquiry as to the 
causes of its existence and progress is to stop 
half-way, as if one should account for the flow 
of the Nile, after the fashion of the ancient 
geographers, by attributing it to the melting 
of the snows on the Mountains of the Moon. 

Christ stands above and behind the Church, 
and all these secondary causes which have been 
enumerated to account for her growth and 
power flow directly from him. He it was who 
purified and humanized the zeal of Christians, 
so that they emerged from the narrowest of 
races to preach the broadest and most universal 
of all religions. He it was who cleared and en- 
larged their view of immortality, so that it be- 
came at once important and efficacious, the 
only doctrine of a future life that has exercised 
a direct and uplifting influence upon the pres- 
ent life. He it was who endowed the Church 
with whatever powers she possessed. He it was 
74 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 


who cleansed and ennobled her moral ideals 
and gave her the only pattern and rule of vir- 
tue which has been universally acknowledged 
as self-consistent, satisfactory, and supreme. 
He it was who cemented her union and strength- 
ened her discipline to such an indestructible sol- 
idarity, that the tie which bound the individual 
soul to him was regarded as superior to all 
earthly relations, and the fellowship which that 
common tie created, surpassed and survived all 
fellowships of race, of culture, of nationality. 

These are simple historical facts. In stating 
them we make no assumptions and propound 
no theories. It is not necessary to take any- 
thing for granted or to adopt any particular 
theological or philosophical system, in order to 
see clearly and beyond the possibility of mis- 
take that all the force and influence of Chris- 
tianity in the world have, as a matter of fact, 
flowed directly from Jesus Christ and from the 
faith which he has inspired in the hearts of men. 

The one question of supreme importance, 
then, if we would understand what Christian- 
ity really means, is, Who is this person who 
stands at the centre of it and fills it with life 
and strength? What did the first Christians 
see in him that made them believe in him so 
absolutely and implicitly and gave them power 
75 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 


to do such mighty works ? What has the church 
seen in him through the ages that has bound 
her to him as her living Lord and Master ? And 
what are we to see in him if he is to be in deed 
and in truth the theme of our gospel ? “ What 

think ye of Christ ?” 

This question is vital and inevitable. If we 
are to have a Christianity which is real and 
historical, we must get into line with history. 
If we are to have behind us the power which 
comes from actual achievements of our gospel 
in the world, we must understand the relation 
which it has always held to the person of Christ. 
If we are to be in any sense the followers of the 
first Christians, and to share the joy and peace 
and power of their religion, we must take the 
view which they took, of Jesus of Nazareth. 

I 

We are not to suppose that faith in Christ 
began with a clear and definite conception of 
his divinity. On the contrary, it is evident 
from the whole gospel record that the belief 
that Christ was divine gradually developed and 
unfolded in the minds of those who knew and 
loved and trusted him. The idea of an incar- 
nation was foreign to the Hebrew mind. There 
was no race in the world that held so strongly 
76 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 


to the thought that God was solitary, unsearch- 
able, and incommunicable. They believed that 
even his true name could not be pronounced 
by human lips, and that it was impossible for 
human eyes really to behold his glory. And 
the very strength of this ancestral faith of theirs, 
standing as it must have done directly in the 
way of belief in an incarnation, is an evidence 
of the tremendous power and unquestionable 
reality of the experience which forced the dis- 
ciples, by slow degrees, to believe firmly and 
unhesitatingly in the divinity of Christ. 

The process by which this result was accom- 
plished lies open to our thought in the New 
Testament. We must go back to the point in- 
dicated in the second lecture. It was the im- 
pression made upon the disciples by Christ’s 
own manifestation of himself, his character, 
his actions, and his words, evidently consistent 
and unique, which led them at last to see in 
him the divine object of faith and worship. 
He was not a mere man. That was evident 
and undeniable. He was higher than men; 
holier than men; he possessed an excellence 
and a power which made them feel in his pres- 
ence that he was more than they were. What 
then was he? There were but two directions 
in which their faith could move. The alterna- 
77 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 


tive was sharply set before the disciples on that 
memorable day at Caesarea Philippi, when 
Christ asked them first, “Whom do men say 
that I, the Son of man, am?” and then, “But 
whom say ye that I am?” There were but 
two lines open to them. One was the line of 
popular superstition, which led them back into 
the past to see in Christ only the ghost of John 
the Baptist, or Elias, or one of the prophets 
come to life again. The other was the new line 
of Christian faith which led them forward to 
see in Jesus “the Christ, the Son of the living 
God .” 1 

It is evident that the disciples did not know 
at first what was meant by the Christhood, 
the Messiahship, the fulfilment of all ancient 
prophecy and sacred ritual in Jesus. But they 
learned the lesson as they kept company with 
him. They heard him speak with an author- 
ity which none of the prophets had ever claimed. 
Recognizing a divine inspiration in the Old 
Testament Scriptures, he distinctly set him- 
self above them as the bringer of a new and 
better revelation. He accomplished, inter- 
preted, and revised them. “Ye have heard 
how it hath been said by them of old time” — 
by whom ? By the lawgivers and prophets and 

1 St. Matt. 16 : 13-16. 

78 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 


psalmists whom Christ recognized as his own 
forerunners and foretellers. “But 1 say unto 
you, love your enemies, bless them that curse 
you, and pray for them that despitefully use 
you.” 1 

Suppose that this were all; suppose that the 
Sermon on the Mount were the whole of the 
New Testament, what should we behold in it? 
Not merely the revelation of a morality more 
pure and perfect than any other the human 
heart has conceived, proceeding from the lips 
of an unlearned Nazarene peasant of the 
first century, but the absolutely overwhelming 
sight of a believing Hebrew placing himself 
above the rule of his own faith, a humble teacher 
asserting supreme authority over all human 
conduct, a moral reformer discarding all other 
foundations, and saying, “Every one that hear- 
eth these sayings of mine and doeth them, I 
will liken him unto a wise man which built his 
house upon a rock.” 2 Nine and forty times, in 
the brief and fragmentary record of the dis- 
courses of Jesus, recurs this solemn phrase with 
which he authenticates the truth: Verily , I say 
unto you . And every time that the disciples 
heard it they must have gotten a new idea of 
what it meant to be the Christ. 

1 St. Matt. 5 : 43, 44. 2 St. Matt. 7 : 24. 

79 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 


Think also of the significance which the 
favourite Messianic title used by Jesus to de- 
scribe himself must have had to their minds. 
He called himself “the Son of man.” 1 Why? 
Was it merely because he was human ? If that 
was all, surely it would not need to be asserted 
and emphasised again and again. Imagine 
any other man, the highest and the holiest, 
insisting upon the reality of his human life, 
dwelling upon it, repeating the assertion of it 
over and over. But this title was, in fact, the 
claim to a peculiar and supreme relation to the 
human race. Christ was not a son of man, 
but the Son of man, one who, in the luminous 
words of Irenseus, recapitulavit in se ipso longam 
hominum expositionem. And as such he as- 
sumed on earth and in his prevision of heaven 
a position which no mere man could rightly 
take. “The Son of man hath power on earth 
to forgive sins .” 2 “The Son of man is Lord 
also of the Sabbath .” 3 “When the Son of man 
shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels 
with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of 
his glory; and before him shall be gathered 
all nations, and he shall separate them one 


1 In St. Matthew, 30 times; in St. Luke, 25 times; in St. Mark, 14 
times. 

2 St. Matt. 9 : 6. 


80 


3 St. Mark 2 : 28. 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 


from another, as a shepherd divideth the sheep 
from the goats .” 1 

Consider what this implied. It was a decla- 
ration that Jesus expected, and was willing, to 
take into his own hands the task of discrimi- 
nating between the good and the bad in the 
unsearchable confusions and complexities of 
the human heart, and of determining, without 
hesitation, without misgiving, without redress, 
the final destinies of the untold myriads of men; 
“an office,” it has been well said, “involving 
such spiritual insight, such discernment of the 
thoughts and intents of the heart of each one 
of the millions at his feet, such awful, unshared 
supremacy in the moral world, that the imagina- 
tion recoils in sheer agony from the task of se- 
riously contemplating the assumption of these 
duties by any created intelligence.” When the 
disciples heard their Master declare that he 
would fulfil this office of Judge of the World, 
they must have begun to feel what it meant 
to be the Christ. 

Nor do I suppose that they realized at first 
the full intention of that second phrase in which 
their view of Jesus was expressed. The Son of 
the living God , — that also was an idea to be grad- 
ually apprehended and unfolded. And think 

J St. Matt. 25 : 31, 32. 

81 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 


what light must have fallen upon it from the 
conduct of Jesus as they followed him from day 
to day. The more closely they knew him, the 
more deeply they felt his sinless purity and sover- 
eign virtue. There was a certainty, an indepen- 
dence, a freedom from all effort and from all re- 
straint in his goodness, such as no other good 
man has ever shown. He had the deepest knowl- 
edge of the evil of sin, yet no shadow or stain of 
it fell upon his own soul. He was on terms of 
closest intimacy — an intimacy such as no saint 
ever dared to assume — with God. He conversed 
with the Father in a friendship which was 
utterly without fear or penitence or misgiving. 

Now when the disciples saw this, it must 
have put them upon deep thoughts, and the 
guidance to these thoughts was given by Christ’s 
own words about himself. He put himself side 
by side with the Divine activity. “My Father 
worketh hitherto and I work .” 1 The Jews 
who heard him say this, sought to kill him, 
because he had not only broken the Sabbath, 
but said also that God was his Father, making 
himself equal with God. And if the Jews 
thought this, what did his own disciples think? 
He claimed a Divine origin and mission: “I 
came forth from the Father ”; 2 “My Father 

1 St. John 5 : 17. * St. John 16 : 28. 


82 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 

sent me/’ 1 He claimed a Divine knowledge 
and fellowship: “No man knoweth the Father 
save the Son”; 2 “0 righteous Father, the 
world hath not known Thee, but I have known 
Thee.” 3 He claimed to unveil the Father’s 
being in himself: “He that hath seen me hath 
seen the Father. I am in the Father and the 
Father in me.” 4 

To what conclusion must such conduct and 
such words as these lead the disciples in their 
interpretation of the true meaning of the title 
“the Son of God”? A conclusion which Jesus 
himself, if he was as wise and good as all men 
admit, must inevitably have foreseen. A con- 
clusion which he himself, if he had been only 
a holy man, better than his disciples but of the 
same nature, would certainly have guarded 
against and prevented at any cost. A con- 
clusion which is expressed in the attitude of 
Thomas, kneeling at the feet of Christ and cry- 
ing, “My Lord and my God.” 5 A conclusion 
which is finally and definitively embodied in 
the action of the apostles going out into the 
world to disciple all nations, and to baptize them 
“into the name of the Father, and of the Son, 
and of the Holy Ghost.” 6 

1 St. John 12 : 49. 2 St. Matt. 11 : 27. 

« St. John 14 : 9, 11. 6 St. John 20 : 28. 

83 


3 St. John 17 : 25. 

« St. Matt. 28 : 19. 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 


II 

There cannot be any question as to the state 
of mind which this action implied. It was the 
deep conviction, not necessarily reasoned out 
and formulated, but lying at the very root of 
conduct, that Jesus Christ the Son was the un- 
veiling of his Father God, and that the Holy 
Spirit who came upon the disciples was the 
Spirit of the Father and the Son. The part 
which the resurrection played in the clarifying 
and confirming of this conviction was impor- 
tant. But we must not misunderstand the 
meaning of the resurrection. It was not in any 
sense a new and different revelation of God, 
imagined or actually received. Whatever the 
form in which Jesus appeared to the disciples 
during the forty days that followed his death, 
he was recognized as the same Jesus; and the 
one effect of his appearance was simply to con- 
firm and deepen the truth of what he had said 
and done while he was with them. And with 
this confirmation the truth took shape and 
substance as an active and enduring power in 
human faith and life and worship. 

There is no more room for doubt that the 
early Christians saw in Christ a personal reve- 
lation of God, than that the friends and fol- 
84 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 


lowers of Abraham Lincoln regarded him as a 
good and loyal American citizen of the white 
race. And even if we could find no direct and 
definite statement of either of these views, the 
evidence that men held them could be clearly 
and certainly read in the facts of history. 

Divine honours were paid to Christ in the 
primitive Church. The first common prayer 
of the disciples, when they were assembled to 
choose an apostle in the place of the traitor 
Judas, was addressed to Christ . 1 The Chris- 
tians were distinguished both from the Jews 
and from the heathen as those who called upon 
the name of the Lord Jesus Christ . 2 The dying 
martyr Stephen showed what was meant by this 
phrase in his prayer, “Lord Jesus, receive my 
spirit .” 3 Saul of Tarsus, when he was con- 
vinced by that strange experience on the road 
to Damascus that Jesus was not an impostor, 
but the Christ, at once addressed him in prayer, 
“Lord, what wilt thou have me to do ?” 4 And 
Ananias, who received Saul into the Church, 
asked guidance and direction from the same 
Lord . 5 Peter baptized the multitudes on the 
day of Pentecost in the name of Jesus Christ . 6 
John wrote of prayer to the Son of God as a 

1 Acts 1 : 24. 2 Acts 9 : 21; 1 Cor. 1:2. 3 Acts 7 : 59. 

4 Acts 9:6. 6 Acts 9 : 13. 6 Acts 2 : 38. 

85 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 


familiar ground of confidence in Christian ex- 
perience . 1 The apostolic benediction was: “The 
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of 
God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost 
be with you all.” 2 The whole current of adora- 
tion and devotion in the New Testament leads 
up naturally and without surprise to “the mag- 
nificent words of St. Paul, in which he speaks of 
“Christ, who is over all, God blessed forever.” 3 

It should be frankly recognized that the first 
Christians assigned a certain subordination to 
the Son in relation to the Father; but it must 
be admitted with equal candour that this sub- 
ordination was not in any sense a separation, 
and that it really implied and involved a unity 
between them wdiich made it possible and nat- 
ural and inevitable for the disciples to pay an 
adoration to the Son with the Father, which, 
if it had been offered to, or claimed by, the 
greatest and best of the apostles, would have 
been instantly repudiated by the whole Church 
as not only absurd but radically blasphemous. 

It is easy to trace the worship of Christ in 
the later development of Christianity. There 
are two sources of evidence: the Christian 
hymns and liturgies; the heathen attacks and 
the apologies which they evoked. 

1 1 John 5 : 13-15. 2 2 Cor. 13 : 14. 

86 


3 Rom. 9 : 5. 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 


The earliest hymns of the Greek Church, the 
“ Thanksgiving at lamplighting,” “Shepherd of 
tender youth,” “The Bridegroom cometh,” the 
“Hymn to Christ after Silence,” celebrate the 
praise of the Lord Jesus. Syriac poetry, through 
its great poet, Ephrem Syrus, takes up the same 
strain of adoration to the Son of God, and its 
undying music may still be heard among the 
mountains of Armenia where the unspeakable 
Turk is exterminating a whole race for loyalty 
to the name of Christ. Latin hymnody, from 
its earliest origin in translations from the Greek 
like the Gloria in Excelsis and the Te Deum , 
through its splendid unfolding in the poetry 
of Hilary of Poictiers, Ambrose of Milan, and 
Gregory the Great, to its sweet culmination in 
the two Bernards, of Clairvaux and of Cluny^ 
repeats the same burden: 

“0 Jesus , Thou the glory art 
Of angel worlds above; 

Thy name is music to my heart , 

Enchanting it with love” 

In every land and language, in German, in 
French, in English, the most precious hymns of 
the Church are fragrant with the name of Christ. 

The early liturgies bear the same testimony 
to the pre-eminence of the Lord Jesus in the 
doxologies and supplications of Christian faith. 

87 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 

The Apostolical Constitutions , 1 the liturgy of 
St. James , 2 the liturgy of St. Mark , 3 the liturgy 
of St. Adseus and St. Maris , 4 unquestionably 
preserve the spirit of the early Christian wor- 
ship; and they all are witnesses to the fact 
that the Christians prayed directly to Christ. 
Indeed, it lies upon the very surface of history 
that the growth of Christianity, as manifested 
in a spreading worship, was not simply the in- 
crease of those who were willing to adore God 
on the authority of Christ. It was distinctly 
and essentially the diffusion of an inward force 
which impelled men to blend the name of Christ 
with the name of God in their prayers, and to 
worship the Son with the Father. The beauti- 
ful Prayer of St. Chrysostom, which closes the 
Litany and the Morning and Evening Prayers 
of the Protestant Episcopal Church, is addressed 
to Christ, “who dost promise that when two or 
three are gathered together in Thy name, Thou 
wilt grant their requests.” 5 6 There is not in 
the world to-day a single great liturgy, Greek, 

1 Apost. Const., Book VIII., chap. vii. 

2 The Divine Liturgy of St. James, iii.: “Sovereign Lord Jesus Christ, 
O Word of God,” etc. 

3 The Divine Liturgy of the Holy Apostle and Evangelist Mark, v., xxii., 
etc. 

4 Liturgy of the Blessed Apostles, composed by St. Adceus and St. Maris , 

xiv. 

6 St. Matt. 18 : 20. 


88 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 


Roman, Armenian, French, German, Scotch, or 
English, which does not contain ascriptions of 
divine glory, and petitions for divine grace, 
addressed to Jesus Christ. 

Heathen writers of very early date assure us 
that this was the practice of Christians from 
the beginning. The younger Pliny reported 
to the Emperor Trajan that the people called 
Christians were accustomed to assemble before 
daybreak and “sing a hymn of praise respon- 
sively to Christ, as it were to God.” In the 
public trials that followed there was never any 
denial of this statement. It was admitted alike 
by those who apostatized under the pressure of 
persecution and by those who remained faithful 
to the name of Christ. The Emperor Hadrian 
wrote to Servian that of the population of Alex- 
andria “some worshipped Serapis, and others 
Christ.” Lucian, the pagan satirist, says in 
his biography of Peregrinus Proteus: “The 
Christians are still worshipping that great man 
who was crucified in Palestine.” 

In all the apologies for the Christian religion 
which were put forth during the persecutions 
under Hadrian, and his successors Antoninus 
Pius and Marcus Aurelius, there was no at- 
tempt to refute the universal charge that the 
Christians worshipped Christ. As if to con- 
89 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 


firm this evidence by one of those indications 
which are all the more significant because they 
are so slight and so clearly unpremeditated 
there still exists a rude caricature, scratched 
by some careless hand upon the walls of the 
Palatine Palace in Rome not later than the 
beginning of the third century, representing a 
human figure with an ass’s head hanging upon 
a cross, while a man stands before it in the atti- 
tude of worship. Underneath is this ill-spelled 
inscription, — 

“Alexamenos adore his God” 

Thus the songs and prayers of believers, the 
accusations of persecutors, the sneers of scep- 
tics, and the coarse jests of mockers all join 
in proving beyond a doubt that the primitive 
Christians paid divine honour to the Lord 
Jesus. I do not see how any man can be in 
touch with Christianity as a living form of wor- 
ship in the world, unless he knows the reality 
and appreciates the force of this unquestion- 
able fact. 


Ill 

Nor will it be possible to understand the in- 
tellectual and moral teachings of the Christian 
religion, as they are recorded in the New Testa- 
ment, unless we put ourselves at the focal point 
90 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 


from which, as a matter of history, these teach- 
ings were first conceived and then unfolded. 
This point was the vision of an unveiling of 
the being and mind of God in Christ. It was 
not merely that Jesus said certain things about 
God which men had not known, or had for- 
gotten. It was that they saw in the coming 
of Christ a personal revelation of the Divine 
Being. And this revelation touched and trans- 
formed every possible sphere of thought and 
feeling in regard to the problems of religion. 
The personality of God was made distinct and 
luminous, not only by the recognition of an 
eternal Fatherhood in his nature, but by the 
light of the knowledge of his glory shining in 
the face of a person . 1 The righteousness of 
God was disclosed in a new aspect by the 
thought that he had sent his own Son in the 
likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin to condemn 
sin in the flesh . 2 The goodness of God was 
confirmed and made sufficient for all possible 
human needs by the conviction that he who 
spared not his own Son, but freely delivered 
him up for us all, would also with him freely 
give us all things . 3 The saving will and power 
of God were apprehended through the vision of 
him in Christ reconciling the world to himself . 4 

1 2 Cor. 4:6. * Rom. 8 : S. 3 Rom. 8 : 32. 

* 2 Cor. 5 : 19. 

91 / 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 


The everlasting and inseparable love of God 
became the sure ground of hope only when it 
was seen embodied in Christ Jesus our Lord . 1 
The true meaning of filial obedience to God 
and of union with God was interpreted in the 
light of conformity to the image of his Son . 2 
And the immense significance of immortality 
was comprehended in the possession of a life 
hid with Christ in God . 3 

Now the window through which men caught 
sight of these truths was, and could have been, 
nothing else than faith in a real incarnation 
of God in Christ. The personal, moral, sym- 
pathetic view of God which distinguished the 
early Church was seen only through that open- 
ing. She saw the Divine Being beaming with 
a new radiance, she saw the wide landscape of 
human duty and destiny illuminated and trans- 
figured, she saw a new heaven and a new earth, 
when she saw in Christ all the fulness of the 
Godhead dwelling bodily. And it was in the 
strength and enthusiasm of this vision, that she 
concentrated all her moral and intellectual ener- 
gies on the one point of keeping that window 
open, and maintaining against direct assault 
and secret dissolution the real and personal 
Deity of Christ. 


1 Rom. 8 : 39. 


2 Rom. 8 : 29. 

92 


3 Col. 3 : 3. 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 


IV 

I am careful to put the statement in this 
form because I believe that it alone corresponds 
with the facts, and because it is only by getting 
our minds into this position that we can hope 
to understand the course, the meaning, and the 
force of Christian doctrine. The early Chris- 
tians looked at God through Christ: they did 
not look at Christ through a preconceived idea 
and a logical definition of God. The true 
development of theology, to put the matter 
plainly, was not abstract, it was personal and 
practical. The doctrine of the Trinity came 
into being to meet an imperative necessity. 
That necessity was the defence of the actual 
worship of Christ, the actual trust in Christ 
as the Unveiler of the Father, which already 
existed at the heart of Christianity. It was 
recognized instinctively that the loss of this 
trust, the silencing of this worship, meant the 
death of Christianity by heart-failure. Every 
speculation which threatened this result, every 
theory of human nature or of divine nature 
which seemed to separate the personality of 
Christ from the personality of God, was re- 
garded by the Church as dangerous and hos- 
tile. Every attempted statement of theological 
93 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 


dogma which appeared to obscure or to imperil 
the reality and the validity of the revelation of 
the Father in the Son, was resented, and a coun- 
ter statement of theological dogma was framed 
to meet it. This was the intellectual conflict 
of Christianity in the first centuries: a struggle 
for life centring about the actual Deity of 
Christ. 

As we trace the progress of this conflict, its 
vital importance emerges more and more clearly. 
Often, I suppose, we cannot help feeling a sense 
of sympathy with the earnest purpose and the 
personal character of those men who were called 
heretics. Often we are conscious of a certain 
distrust for the metaphysical and exegetical 
arguments, and of a grave repugnance for the 
physical and political methods which were 
used by the orthodox to enforce their definitions. 
Athanasius was not an altogether lovely per- 
son. Some of the early Church Councils were 
almost as disorderly and reckless as some of 
the regiments that have fought in various wars 
to defend the cause of human liberty and jus- 
tice. But the question is not one of the manner 
of defence or attack. It is a question of the 
reality and significance of the cause attacked 
and defended. And here we see that Athanasius 
with all his faults was on the right side, and 
94 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 


Arius with all his virtues was on the wrong side. 
Through all the confusion of metaphysical dis- 
pute about the exact meaning of substance and 
subsistence, nature and personality, ideal exist- 
ence and real existence, — terms which must 
change their significance as the methods of 
human philosophy change, and must always 
represent imperfectly a mystery which is for 
us unsearchable and indefinable, — through all 
this confusion one fact shines out clear and dis- 
tinct. The unveiling of the Father in Christ 
was, and continued to be, and still is, the Pal- 
ladium of Christianity. All who have surren- 
dered it, for whatever reason, have been dis- 
persed and scattered. All who have defended 
it, in whatever method, have been held fast in 
the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of 
the Son of God, provided they were willing to 
live up to its consequences . 1 

This point of view must condition the atti- 
tude of our minds towards the doctrine of the 
Trinity. No Christian man can be hostile or 
indifferent to it when he remembers its history. 
It may have been too much elaborated by minds 
over-curious in metaphysical distinctions. It 
may have been put in a position of undue pre- 
eminence by theologians whose energies were 

1 Eph. 4 : 13. 

95 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 


all absorbed in its construction and in the con- 
templation of the work of their own reason in 
the service of Christianity. But in spite of all 
excesses and errors, it stands as an enduring 
monument of the loyalty of the faith to its 
central conviction. In all its forms, from the 
sharply tri-personal Trinity of Athanasius, to 
the essentially tri-modal Trinity of Augustine, 
the great service which it has rendered is not 
abstract nor philosophical. It is practical. It 
has protected the conviction that the real na- 
ture of God is revealed in Christ; it has justi- 
fied the consciousness that the Spirit of Christ, 
animating the Christian life, is the Spirit of 
God; it has preserved the sense of real com- 
munion with God in Christ which is the nerve 
of Christian worship. 

But the doctrine of the Trinity is not the 
gospel, nor is it the foundation of the gospel. 
It cannot be preached as a saving message to 
the souls of men, except in that form in which 
we find it in Phillips Brooks’ noble Sermon for 
Trinity Sunday , and Dr. George A. Gordon’s 
powerful discourse on The Trinity the Ground of 
Humanity. It is the effort to apprehend a re- 
lation of the Being of God to the conscious 
experience of man; a truth exhibited in the 
course of revelation and recognized in its mys- 
96 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 


terious unfolding both before and after all ef- 
forts to symbolize it in theological language; 
in brief, it is the reaching out of the human 
mind, conscious of its limitations and condi- 
tions, towards a vision and worship of the 
Father in the Son through the Spirit. The 
doctrine of the Trinity is not the Palladium. 
It is the defence. In its broad outlines it seems 
to me necessary and satisfactory. No other 
answer to the profound questions which in- 
evitably arise out of the contact between the 
idea of God, and the experience of real life in 
all its manifoldness, appears to me half so 
reasonable or complete as that which asserts 
that “the various fundamental forms of society 
on the earth, the essential relationships of hu- 
manity, have their Archetype, their Eternal 
Pattern and Causal Source, in the nature of 
the Infinite.” I will confess that the form of 
this answer which contemplates the existence 
of these eternal relationships in the Divine 
nature as most clearly and positively personal, 
is more conclusive to my mind than any other. 
But if other men think otherwise on this point, 
we are not therefore divided from each other, 
nor from the Christian faith. The question is 
one of metaphysics. It is not a question of 
religion. All modes of defining the Trinity as 
97 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 


a doctrine must be kept subordinate to the 
purpose for which it exists. All attempts to 
express it are valuable only in so far as they 
help us to keep in view the unveiling of the 
Divine nature which centres in him who was 
manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, 
seen of angels, preached among the nations, 
believed on in the world, received up in glory. 1 

V 

Now wherein is a message like this, the gospel 
of a personal unveiling of God in the person of 
Christ, adapted to the needs of the present age ? 

1. It seems to me first of all that the course 
of modern thought has prepared the way for 
it by destroying the a 'priori objections to the 
Incarnation. Shallow agnosticism makes two 
assumptions which are contradictory. It as- 
sumes that man is unable to attain to the 
knowledge of God; and that it is impossible for 
God to reveal himself to man. But if we can- 
not know him, how can we know that he can- 
not reveal himself? This would be in effect 
the most intimate kind of knowledge. To take 
it for granted that an Incarnation of God is 
impossible or incredible is to profess a most 
perfect and exclusive understanding of the 

1 1 Tim. 3 : 16. 

98 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 


Divine nature. “At one time,” says Mr. Ro- 
manes, “it seemed to me impossible that any 
proposition, verbally intelligible as such, could 
be more violently absurd than that of the In- 
carnation. Now I see that this standpoint is 
wholly irrational. . . . ‘But the Incarnation 
is opposed to common sense.’ No doubt: ut- 
terly so; but so it ought to be if true. Common 
sense is merely a rough register of common 
experience. But the Incarnation, if it ever 
took place, whatever else it may have been, 
was not a common event. ‘But it is deroga- 
tory to God to become man.’ How do you 
know? Besides, Christ was not an ordinary 
man. Both negative criticism and the positive 
effects of his life prove this; while if we for a 
moment adopt the Christian point of view for 
the sake of argument, the whole raison d'etre 
of mankind is bound up in him. Lastly, there 
are considerations per contra , rendering an In- 
carnation antecedently probable.” 1 

2. Now these considerations to which Ro- 
manes alludes are not foreign to the intellectual 
atmosphere of our age; they are native to it; 
they are in fact the offspring of the times, born 
of the spirit which now leads the best thoughts 
of men. 


1 Thoughts on Religion, p. 186. 

99 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 

The whole doctrine of development, as it is 
conceived by the deepest and clearest minds, 
looks forward to the discovery of an Incarna- 
tion which shall be at once the crown and the 
completion of the process of evolution. If 
nature is an orderly and progressive mani- 
festation of an Unseen Power; if each succes- 
sive step in this manifestation realizes and ex- 
hibits something higher and more perfect, to 
which all that has gone before has pointed, 
and in which the potentialities of all previous 
developments are not only summed up, but 
raised to a new power; if the mechanical struc- 
ture of inorganic substances contains a prophecy 
(only to be interpreted after the event) of or- 
ganic life, and organic life is a basis for instinct 
and the elementary processes of intellect, and 
the rude forms of thought and feeling in the 
lower animals foreshadow the unfolding of re- 
flective reason and moral consciousness in man, 
— then surely this reflective reason and this 
moral consciousness, in themselves confessedly 
imperfect, must be only the foundation for a 
fuller and more perfect manifestation of that 
Unseen Power out of whose depths all preced- 
ing manifestations have come forth. And if 
the universal verdict of human science and 
philosophy is correct in assuming that the lower 
100 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 


must precede the higher, and that organic life 
is above inorganic life, and that reason is above 
instinct, and that virtue is above automatic 
action, then it is to be expected that the com- 
plete manifestation of that Unseen Power which 
makes for Reason and Righteousness will neither 
be omitted nor intruded before its time. It 
cannot come too soon, without violating the 
order of evolution. It cannot fail to come, 
without destroying the significance of evolu- 
tion. 

But in what form can it come except one 
which at once sums up all that has gone before 
it, and advances to a new level? If the uni- 
verse contains an unveiling of the might, and 
wisdom, and reasonableness, and righteousness, 
of its Primal Cause, then certainly it must con- 
tain at last an unveiling of his personality. This 
is the only thing that remains to be added. This 
is the only thing that embraces all the rest and 
raises it to a new power. The highest category 
known to our minds is that of self-conscious life. 
Without the conception of a personal God, 
man’s view of the universe must remain for- 
ever incomplete, incoherent, and unreasonable. 
Without the revelation of a personal God, the 
process of evolution as the unfolding of the 
real secret of the universe must remain un- 
101 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 


finished and futile. Philosophy as well as reli- 
gion pushes us forward to this conclusion. Per- 
sonality is the ultimate reality. Personality 
must be the final revelation. But a person 
can be unveiled only in a personal form. There- 
fore all the presumptions of reason are in favour 
of an Incarnation of the Deity, not outside of 
nature, but in nature, to consummate and crown 
that visible evolution whereby the invisible 
things of him from the creation of the world 
are clearly seen. And all the processes of in- 
telligence are satisfied, and rest and repose in 
the conviction that the Word, which was in 
the beginning with God and which was God 
and by whom all things were made, finally be- 
came flesh and dwelt among us, revealing his 
glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the 
Father, full of grace and truth. 

3. Moreover, this view of Christ is adapted 
to the present age because it is historically con- 
sistent. We have seen that it underlies the 
very existence and growth of the Christian 
Church. The testimony of eighteen centuries 
to the impossibility of explaining the personal- 
ity of Christ on humanitarian grounds is in 
itself an evidence of his divinity. 

Lincoln was right when he said: “You can 
fool some of the people all of the time, and all 
102 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 


of the people some of the time, but you can- 
not fool all of the people all of the time.” A 
thousand attempts to account for the life of 
Christ without admitting his divinity have 
been made. Not one of them has succeeded 
in winning the assent and approbation of any 
great mass of men for any great length of time. 
They have hardly survived the lives of those 
who have invented them. Each new natural- 
istic theory of Christ has discredited and de- 
molished its predecessors. And if any one of 
them is alive and finds credence to-day, it is 
only because it is the latest, and it is but waiting 
for its successor (as the theory of Socinus waited 
for the theory of Strauss, and the theory of 
Strauss for the theory of Renan) to be its judge 
and destroyer. 

Meantime historic Christianity, which be- 
holds God incarnate in Christ, stands as a rock 
around which the tides of opinion ebb and flow. 
The Church has changed in some things, but 
not in this. It has modified, enlarged, dimin- 
ished, or abandoned some articles of faith, but 
not this. If it be an error, it is such an error 
as the world has never seen anywhere else; for 
it has not only stood firm through the fiercest 
and most persistent storm of criticism that has 
ever been directed against any human opinion, 
103 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 


but it has also been the foundation of the strong- 
est and saintliest lives that humanity has ever 
known. If it be a truth, it must be for every 
Christian preacher the central truth. For it is 
certain that this age of ours, with its ruthless 
critical spirit, with its keen historical sense, 
will never respect the intelligence, though it 
may acknowledge the good intentions, of a man 
who professes to speak in the name of Chris- 
tianity without proclaiming, as the core of his 
message, the Divine Christ. 

4. And this gospel meets the need of our 
times because it is the satisfaction of humanity. 
More urgent and painful even than the ques- 
tions of the intellect in regard to the being and 
nature of God, are the misgivings of the heart 
in regard to his relations to us. If he is that 
remote and inaccessible Sovereign 

“Who sees with equal eyes , as Lord of ally 
A hero perish or a sparrow fall,” 

what possible answer can we find in him to the 
longings and desires of our souls for a Divine 
love ? what possible support can we find in him 
for our struggles against outward temptation 
and indwelling evil? what possible sympathy 
can we find in him for our hopes and aspira- 
tions and upward strivings, out of the quick- 
104 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 


sands of heredity and environment, towards 
liberty and light ? The religion of the Incarna- 
tion is the only one that brings us near to God, 
assures us of our kinship with him, and of his 
infinite, practical, helpful love for us. This 
faith alone bridges the chasm that divides the 
eternal self-existent Spirit from our finite, de- 
spondent, earthbound souls. This faith alone 
gives us any knowledge of the things that we 
most need to know about him. Deism is like 
a message written in an inscrutable hieroglyph 
which conveys no clear meaning to the mind. 
Theism is like a message which is intelligible 
to the intellect, but unsatisfactory to the heart, 
because it has no personal address and no sig- 
nature. Christianity is a personal message, 
signed by the hand of a Father, and conveyed 
to us by the hand of the Son. 

The comparison is imperfect. It falls far 
short of the truth. In Christianity the mes- 
senger is the message. The love which sent 
and the love which delivered it are the same. 
Christ is Immanuel, God with us. The gospel 
of the Incarnation does not profess to remove 
all intellectual perplexities in regard to the 
existence of God and our own souls. It pro- 
fesses simply to establish such a conscious re- 
lation between our souls and God that our 
105 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 


ethical needs shall be satisfied at once; and 
thus it shall be infinitely easier, either to dis- 
solve, or to endure, our intellectual perplexi- 
ties. This relation is possible only in Christ. 
And it is possible in him only when we receive 
him as the unveiling of the Father. This re- 
quires an act of faith. But it is a faith which 
is simpler in its form, more natural in its 
method, and more profound in its spiritual re- 
sults than any other. For in the last analysis 
it is just an act of personal confidence in a per- 
son. And this does not demand perfect knowl- 
edge, but absolute trust. 

To imagine that we can adapt our preaching 
to this age of doubt by weakening, concealing, 
or abandoning the truth of the Deity of Christ 
is to mistake the great need of our times. It 
is to seek to commend our gospel by taking 
away from it the chief thing that men really 
want, — an assurance of sympathy and kinship 
with God. “One of the great marks of the 
youth of to-day,” says Ernest Lavisse, — “I 
speak of thinking youth, — is a longing for the 
Divine.” This longing is to be met not by 
slighting, but by emphasising, not by clouding, 
but by clarifying, not by withdrawing, but by 
advancing, the true Deity of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. Let us take up the words of the ancient 
106 


THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER 


creed: “We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ , 
the Son of God , only-begotten of the Father , that 
is of the substance of the Father , God of God, Light 
of Light, very God of God, begotten, not made, being 
of one substance with the Father: by Whom all 
things were made which are in heaven and earth : 
Who, for us men and for our salvation, came 
down, and was incarnate, and was made man, 
and suffered, and rose the third day, and ascended 
into the heavens, and shall come to judge the quick 
and the dead ’ 9 


107 


IV 

THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 


VTEARLY fifty years ago, Horace Bushnell, 
^ the most mystical of logicians, or the most 
logical of mystics, delivered before Yale Uni- 
versity a magnificent discourse upon The Divin- 
ity of Christ. In that fine work of genius, 
wrought out of darkness and light, like an in- 
tricate carving of ebony and ivory, I find these 
words: “ Christ is in such a sense God, or God 
manifested, that the unknown term of his na- 
ture, that which we are most in doubt of, and 
about which we are least capable of any posi- 
tive affirmation, is the human.” 

This sentence, it seems to me, is not of light, 
but of darkness. It does not represent that 
illuminating and harmonious kind of truth 
which comes directly from the divine revela- 
tion of Christ. It belongs rather to that ob- 
scured and discordant manner of presenting 
truth which is the consequence of studying it 
too much at second-hand and too little at first- 
hand, too much in the speculations and reason- 
108 


THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 

ings of men and too little in the facts of life 
wherein it was first manifested. Whatever 
may be said of this sentence as a statement of 
the result of dogmatic theology, — and in this 
sense I do not question its accuracy, — when we 
consider its plain meaning as an expression of 
Christian experience and faith, one thing is 
clear: It is utterly out of touch with the ex- 
perience and faith of the first disciples. It is 
in sharp and striking discord with the con- 
sciousness of the primitive Church. For if 
there is anything in regard to which the New 
Testament makes positive and undoubting af- 
firmation, it is the complete, genuine, and veri- 
table humanity of Christ. If there is any fact 
which stands out luminous and distinct in the 
experience of the early Christians, it is that they 
saw in Christ, not merely a mysterious mani- 
festation of the Divine, but something utterly 
different. They saw the mystery reduced to 
terms of simplicity, the revelation levelled to 
the direct apprehension of man, the unveiling 
of the Father under conditions which were so 
familiar that they dissolved doubts and diffi- 
culties They saw in Christ the human life of 
God . 


109 


THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 


I 

Definition is dangerous. And this is the 
nature of the danger: the definition has an in- 
herent tendency to substitute itself for the thing 
defined. The terms in which a fact is expressed 
creep into the place of the fact itself. The real- 
ity is removed insensibly to a remote distance 
behind the verbal symbols which represent it. 
The way of access to it is blocked, and its in- 
fluence is restricted by the forms of expression 
invented to define it. 

I do not know where we can find a more vivid 
illustration of this process than that which is 
given, in many ways, in the history of art. The 
first pictures of Christ, traced in colour upon 
the walls of the Catacombs, or carved in stone 
upon the sarcophagi of the Christian dead, do 
not give us indeed the very earliest conception 
of him; for the Christian art of the first two 
centuries, if it ever existed, has perished. But 
that which remains, dating from the third and 
fourth centuries, bears witness to an idea of 
the Christ which was simple and natural and 
humane. He appears as a figure of youthful 
beauty and graciousness; the good Shepherd 
bearing a lamb upon his shoulders; the true 
Orpheus drawing all creatures and souls by the 
110 


THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 


charm of his amiable music. These are only 
symbolic representations, yet they evidence a 
conception of him which was still in touch with 
the facts. A little later we find an effort to 
conceive and depict him with more realism. 
His face appears in pictures which resemble the 
description given in the spurious Epistle of 
Lentulus: “A man of dignified presence, with 
dark hair parted in the middle and flowing 
down, after the custom of the Nazarenes, over 
both shoulders; his brow clear and pure; his 
unfurrowed face of pleasant aspect and medium 
complexion; his mouth and nose faultless; his 
short, light beard parted in the middle; his 
eyes bright and lustrous.” 

But when we pass on to the creations of so- 
called Byzantine art, we find ourselves face to 
face with an utterly different view of the Christ. 
His countenance now stares out in glittering 
mosaic from the walls of great churches, huge, 
dark, threatening, a dreadful and forbidding 
face. The fixed and formal lines are repeated 
and deepened by artist after artist. Every fea- 
ture of naturalness is obliterated; every feature 
that seemed to express awfulness is exaggerated 
and emphasised. The wide-set eyes, the long 
narrow countenance, the stern, inflexible mouth, 
— in this ocular definition the man Christ Jesus 
111 


THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 


has vanished, and we see only the immense, 
immutable, and terrible Pantokrator, who can- 
not be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. 

When we turn to the intellectual life of the 
Church out of which this type of art grew, we 
see there the process explained. The early 
Greek Fathers, like Irenseus, went directly to 
the Holy Scriptures for their view of the per- 
son of Christ, and frankly accepted all the fea- 
tures of the living portrait there disclosed. They 
recognized without reserve the reality of Christ’s 
human growth in wisdom and stature and in 
favour with God and men; the actual limita- 
tions of Christ’s human knowledge as expressed 
in the questions that he asked and in his pro- 
fession of ignorance in regard to the time of 
his second advent; the intimacy of his sym- 
pathy with us in temptation, suffering, and 
death. But with the development of theo- 
logical definition this direct view of Christ was 
modified, obscured, and at last totally eclipsed. 
Instead of looking at God through his revela- 
tion in Christ, the Fathers began to look at 
Christ through a more and more abstract, pre- 
cise, and inflexible statement of the meta- 
physical idea of God. It became necessary to 
harmonize the Scripture record of the life of 
Jesus with the theories of the divine nature set 
112 


THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 

forth in the decrees of councils and defined with 
amazing particularity in the writings of theo- 
logians. In the effort to accomplish this, two 
main lines of thought were followed. One line 
abandoned the belief in Christ’s real and com- 
plete humanity, and reduced his human life to 
a tenuous and filmy apparition. The other line 
distinguished between his humanity and his 
Divinity in such a way as to divide him into 
two halves, either of which appears virtually 
complete without the other, and both of which 
are united, not in a single and sincere personal- 
ity, but in an outward manifestation and a 
concealed life, covering in some mysterious 
way a double centre of existence. It is only 
fair to say that the extreme results of these 
two lines of thought were condemned by the 
Church in the heresies of Doketism and Apol- 
linarianism, Eutychianism and Nestorianism. 
But it is equally fair to say that the influence 
of these theories was by no means checked nor 
extirpated. They continued to make them- 
selves felt powerfully and perniciously; now 
in the direction of dissolving the humanity of 
Christ into a mere cloud enveloping his Deity; 
and again in the direction of dividing and de- 
stroying the unity of his person in the defini- 
tions of his dual nature. 

113 


THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 

It is not necessary, nor would it be possible, 
for us to trace this process in detail through all 
its complexities and self-contradictions. It will 
be enough to give two or three specimens of 
the kind of work to which it led in dealing with 
two essential features of the picture of Christ 
which is given to us in the Gospels: his human 
limitation of knowledge, and his human growth 
in wisdom, stature, and grace. Both limita- 
tion and growth are unexempt conditions of 
manhood. Both are unquestionably attributed 
to Christ in the New Testament. Both are 
explicitly denied by theologians. Ephrem Sy- 
rus, commenting upon the Diatessaron of Tatian, 
says: “ Christ, though he knew the moment of 
his advent, yet that they might not ask him 
any more about it, said, 1 know it not .” 
Chrysostom, in his explanation of St. Matthew 
24 : 36, paraphrases Christ’s words in this ex- 
traordinary fashion: “For if thou seek after 
the day and the hour thou shalt not hear them 
of me, saith he; but if of times and preludes, 
I will tell thee all exactly. For that indeed I 
am not ignorant of it , I have shown by many 
things. — I lead thee to the very vestibule; and 
if I do not open unto thee the doors, this also 
I do for your good.” John of Damascus, 
defending the orthodox faith, declares that, 
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THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 


“ Christ is said to advance in wisdom and stat- 
ure and grace, because he grows in fact in 
stature, and through his growth in stature 
brings out into exhibition the wisdom which 
already existed in him. . . . But those who 
say that he really grew in wisdom and grace 
as receiving increase in these, deny that the 
flesh was united to the word from the first mo- 
ment of its existence.” Peter Lombard does 
not explicitly adopt, but quotes with evident 
approval, the opinion that the person of the 
eternal Word put on a human body and soul 
as a robe, in order that he might appear suit- 
ably to the eyes of mortals, yet in himself he 
was not changed by this incarnation, but re- 
mained one and the same, immutable. 

A very full and clear exhibition of the dark- 
ness and unreality in which the patristic and 
mediaeval theologians involved the person of 
Christ may be found in Professor A. B. Bruce’s 
great book on The Humiliation of Christ , and 
in Canon Charles Gore’s two admirable vol- 
umes on The Incarnation , from which I have 
taken some illustrations after verifying them. 
Professor Bruce sums up the matter by saying: 
“The effect, though not the design, of theories 
of Christ’s person has been to a large extent to 
obscure some of these elementary truths, — the 
115 


THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 


unity of the person, or the reality of the hu- 
manity, or the divinity dwelling within the 
man, or the voluntariness and ethical value of 
the state of the humiliation. That is, certain- 
ties have been sacrificed for uncertainties, facts 
for hypotheses, faith for speculation.” 

Canon Gore, in his Bampton Lectures, 
adroitly uses the Jesuit theologian De Lugo 
as a man of straw through whom he may safely 
and vigorously attack the false conceptions of 
Christ’s person which are still current, and to 
a considerable degree dominant, in dogmatic 
theology. He says that De Lugo depicts a 
Christ “who, if he was, as far as his body is 
concerned, in a condition of growth, was, as re- 
gards his soul and intellect, from the first mo- 
ment and throughout his life in full enjoyment 
of the beatific vision. Externally a wayfarer, 
a viator , inwardly he was throughout a com - 
prehensor , he had already attained. ... It is 
denied that he can be strictly called ‘the ser- 
vant of God’ even as man, in spite of the direct 
use of that expression in the Acts of the Apos- 
tles. He is spoken of at the institution of the 
Eucharist as offering sacrifice to his own God- 
head.” 

Canon Gore condemns this picture by De 
Lugo as in striking contradiction to that which 
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THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 

the New Testament presents. But the point 
which I wish to make clear and distinct, is that, 
in spite of this contradiction, the picture has 
not been discarded in Christian theology. It 
still exercises an obscuring influence upon the 
vision of Christ. It still produces representa- 
tions of him in which definitions dominate facts, 
and formulas hide realities. We do not need 
to go back to the seventeenth century, nor 
abroad to the Jesuits, for our examples. We 
may turn to Archdeacon Wilberforce’s book on 
The Incarnation , and find him representing the 
body of Christ as miraculous in its freedom 
from sickness, its power over animals, its ex- 
emption from the necessity of death, and its 
inherent power of communicating life to others. 
In regard to the mind of Christ, he says that 
“ since it would be impious to suppose that our 
Lord had pretended an ignorance which he did 
not experience, we are led to the conclusion 
[astonishing conclusion !] that what he partook, 
as man, was not actual ignorance, but such 
deficiency in the means of arriving at truth as 
belongs to mankind.” We may turn to the 
Dogmatic Theology of Dr. W. G. T. Shedd and 
read: “ Jesus Christ as a theanthropic person 
was constituted of a divine nature and a hu- 
man nature. The divine nature had its own 
117 


THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 

form of experience, like the mind in an ordinary 
human person; and the human nature had its 
own form of experience, like the body in a com- 
mon man. The experiences of the divine na- 
ture were as diverse from those of the human 
nature as those of the human mind are from 
those of the human body. Yet there was but 
one person who was the subject-ego of both of 
these experiences. At the very time when 
Christ was conscious of weariness and thirst 
by the well of Samaria, he also was conscious 
that he was the eternal and only-begotten Son 
of God, the second person in the Trinity. This 
is proved by his words to the Samaritan woman : 
‘Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall 
give him shall never thirst; but the water that 
I shall give him shall be in him a well of water 
springing up into everlasting life. I that speak 
unto thee am the Messiah.’ The first-men- 
tioned consciousness of fatigue and thirst came 
through the human nature in his person; the 
second-mentioned consciousness of omnipotence 
and supremacy came through the divine nature 
in his person. If he had not had a human na- 
ture, he could not have had the former con- 
sciousness; and if he had not had a divine 
nature, he could not have had the latter. Be- 
cause he had both natures in one person, he 
118 


THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 


could have both.” We may turn to Canon 
Liddon’s magnificent work on The Divinity of 
our Lord and find him writing: “ Christ’s Man- 
hood is not of itself an individual being; it is 
not a seat and centre of personality; it has no 
conceivable existence apart from the act where- 
by the Eternal Word in becoming Incarnate 
called it into being and made it his own. It 
is a vesture which he has folded around his 
person; it is an instrument through which he 
places himself in contact with men and where- 
by he acts upon humanity.” 

If we accept this picture of Christ, the man- 
hood of Jesus fades, retreats, grows dim and 
shadowy. It wavers like a veil. It dissolves 
like mist. It descends again mysterious and 
impenetrable, illusory and impersonal, to en- 
velop him whom we love and adore in its strange 
and unfamiliar folds. We grope after him, but 
we can touch nothing but the hem of his mystic 
robe. We long for him, but he approaches us, 
and comes into contact with us, only through 
an instrument. He is not what he seems. The 
Son of God behind that veil is beyond our reach. 
The Son of man, whom human eyes beheld and 
human hands touched, is not the real, living, 
veritable Saviour, but only the form, the gar- 
ment, of an inscrutable life. And if, in our dire 
119 


THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 


confusion, our reasoning faith still succeeds in 
holding fast to the Eternal Logos, our confiding 
faith is maimed and robbed by the loss of that 
true, near, personal, loving, sympathizing Jesus, 
who was born of a woman, suffered under Pon- 
tius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. 
He is gone from us, as certainly as if the Phari- 
sees had spoken truth when they said that his 
disciples came by night and stole him away. 
The thing of which we are most in doubt, and 
about which we are least capable of any posi- 
tive affirmation, as Dr. Bushnell said, is the 
humanity of Christ. We are left with a per- 
fectly orthodox doctrine of two natures, but 
we no longer have a clear and simple gospel of 
One Person to preach to doubting men. 

II 

But the heart of Christendom has never 
rested content with this distant, vague, uncer- 
tain view of the real manhood of our Lord. 
There has always been a protest against it. 
There has always been an effort to escape from it. 

We can see a strange and indirect but 
indubitable evidence of this deep inward dis- 
satisfaction, in the rise and growth of an im- 
passioned devotion to the human mother of 
Jesus. The worship of the Virgin Mary was 


THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 

a reprizal for the obscuration of the humanity 
of her Son. In the thought of her true womanly 
tenderness and affection, her real and unques- 
tionable sorrows, her simple and familiar joys, 
her intimate, genuine, unfailing sympathy with 
all that makes our mortal life a bitter, blessed 
reality to us, the souls of the lowly and the 
lonely found that peace and consolation which 
they could no longer find in the contemplation 
of the distant Second Person of the Trinity 
through the telescope of theology. That which 
Jesus himself was to John and Peter, to the 
household of Bethany, to the penitent publican, 
and to the woman which was a sinner, Maiy 
became to the baffled and confused faith of a 
later age, — an approachable mediator of the 
divine mercy, a helper who could really under- 
stand and feel the need of those who cried for 
help, a warm and living image of the Eternal 
Sympathy in flesh and blood. In the light of 
mediaeval dogmatics Mariolatry appears not 
without its justification. And for my part, I 
should not wish to be bound to the Christol- 
ogy of Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas, 
without finding the compensation which their 
followers found in personal devotion and con- 
fidential trust, flowing instinctively and irre- 
sistibly towards the blessed Virgin. 

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THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 

But, after all, this was only a substitute. 
It gave to faith the image of a lovely and ador- 
able humanity in closest union with God; but 
it did not give back the old vision of the human 
life of God. And so through all the ages we see 
men turning, now in solitary thought, now in 
great companies, to seek that vision. The 
renaissance of Christian art, with its beautiful 
pictures of the infancy of Jesus, with its pierc- 
ing and pathetic representations of the suffer- 
ings of Jesus, bears witness to the eagerness of 
that search. The revivals of Christian life, 
seen in such diverse yet cognate forms as the 
rise of the “Poor Men of Lyons” and the foun- 
dation of the “Brotherhood of St. Francis” 
are evidences of the same movement back to 
Christ. Peter Waldo outside of the Church, 
and Francis of Assisi within the Church, were 
awakened by the same vision of Jesus, “a man 
of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” and 
were inspired by the same desire to make his 
real human life the pattern of all piety and the 
example of all goodness. The Reformation, 
which was at once and equally an intellectual 
and a spiritual protest against the arrogance 
of current theology and the coldness of religious 
life, supplies no better watchword to express 
its great motive than the saying of Erasmus: 

122 


THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 


“I could wish that those frigid subtleties either 
were completely cut off, or were not the only 
things that the theologians held as certain, and 
that the Christ 'pure and simple might be im- 
planted deep within the minds of men." Modern 
Biblical scholarship, with its splendid apparatus 
of linguistic and historical learning, proceeding 
in part, at first, from a sceptical impulse, has 
developed in our generation, either through 
the conversion of sceptics in the process of re- 
search, or through the awakening of believers, 
to the necessities of their faith, into a reverent 
and eager quest for the historic Christ, the Jesus 
of the Gospels, the Lord of the primitive 
Church, that we may see him as the first Chris- 
tians saw him, in the integrity of his person 
and the sincerity of his life, and receive from 
him what they received, — a faith that dissolved 
doubts and an inspiration that conquered diffi- 
culties. Back to the New Testament of our 
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,— back to the 
facts that lie behind the definitions, back to 
the Person who embodies the truth, back to 
the record and reflection of that which the apos- 
tles “ heard, and saw with their eyes, and looked 
upon, and their hands handled of the word of 
life,” — this, and this only, is the way that leads, 
us within sight of 


123 


THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 


“the heaven-drawn picture 
Of Christ, the living Word .” 

Now it is a marvellous thing, and one for 
which we can never be grateful enough, that 
when we come to the New Testament in this 
spirit, we find in it exactly what we need; not 
an abstract formula, not a collection of defini- 
tions, but the graphic reflection of a Person 
seen from a fourfold point of view, and the sim- 
ple record of manifold human experience under 
the direct and dominant influence of that Per- 
son. And the one fact that emerges clear and 
triumphant from the reflection and the record, 
is that the writers of the New Testament never 
were in doubt of the human nature of Christ 
and never hesitated to make the most positive 
affirmations in regard to it. 

The Christ of the Gospels is bone of our bone, 
flesh of our flesh, mind of our mind, heart of 
our heart. He is in subjection to his parents 
as a child. He grows to manhood. His char- 
acter is unfolded and perfected by discipline. 
He labours for daily bread, and prays for Di- 
vine grace. He hungers, and thirsts, and sleeps, 
and rejoices, and weeps. He is anointed with 
the Spirit for his ministry. He is tempted. 
He is lonely and disappointed. He asks for in- 
formation. He confesses ignorance. He in- 
124 


THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 


terprets the facts of nature and life with a 
prophetic insight. But he makes no new dis- 
closure of the secrets of omniscience. There is 
no hint nor indication that he is leading a double 
life, reigning consciously as God while suffering 
apparently as man. His personality is simple 
and indivisible. The glory of what he is and 
does, lies not only in its perfection, but in the 
hard conditions of its accomplishment. Super- 
human in his origin, as the only-begotten Son 
of God; superhuman in his office and work, 
as the revealer of the Father and the redeemer 
of mankind; in his earthly existence the Christ 
of the Gospels enters without reserve and with- 
out deception into all the conditions and limi- 
tations which are necessary to give to the world, 
once and forever, the human life of God . 

When we turn to the Epistles to see how this 
view of Christ was affected by the recognition 
of his divine glory and power as one who had 
been raised to the right hand of God and made 
head over all things to the Church, two things 
strike us with tremendous force. First, the 
identity of his person was not lost, nor the con- 
tinuity of his being broken: the exalted Christ 
is none other than “this same Jesus.” 1 Second, 
the reality and absoluteness of his humiliation 

1 Acts 1 : 11 . 

125 


THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 


are emphasised as the ground and cause of his 
exaltation. 

How vividly these two things come out, for 
example, in the writings of St. Paul. It has 
been well said that “the Christ whom Paul 
had seen was the risen Christ, and the concep- 
tion of him in his glorified character is the one 
which rules his thoughts and forms the start- 
ing-point of his teaching.” Corresponding to 
this present glory, Paul assumes an eternally 
pre-existent glory of Christ as the image of the 
invisible God, the medium and end of crea- 
tion . 1 Now it is of this Person, divinely glori- 
ous in the past as the One who is before all 
things and in whom all things consist , 2 divinely 
glorious in the present as the One who is far 
above every name that is named, not only in 
this world but in that which is to come, 3 — it 
is of this Person that Paul writes, in words so 
strong that they touch the very border of the 
impossible: “For our sakes, he beggared himself 
that we through his beggary might be en- 
riched .” 4 And again: “He, existing in the 
form of God, did not consider an equal state 
with God a thing to be selfishly grasped and 
held, but emptied himself , and took the form 

1 Col. 1 : 16. 2 Col. 1 : 17. 3 Eph. 1 : 21. 

4 2 Cor. 8 : 9. 

126 


THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 


of a slave, being made in the likeness of 
man .” 1 

These powerful expressions, “ self -beggary,” 
self -emptying,” seem to be directly designed 
to break up the conventional moulds in which 
dogmatic theology has attempted to cast the 
truth and let it harden. They bring back a 
vital warmth and motion into the facts of the 
Incarnation. Once more it glows and flows. 
Once more we see that it is not a mere exhibi- 
tion of being but a process of becoming. The 
idea of self-beggary mightily overflows the 
mere statement that a human nature was added 
and united to the divine nature; for that would 
have been no impoverishment but an enrich- 
ment. The idea of self-emptying shatters the 
narrow dogma that the Son of God suffered no 
change in himself when he became man. It 
was a change so absolute, so immense, that it 
can only be compared with the vicissitude from 
fulness to emptiness. He laid aside the exist- 
ence-form of God, in order that he might take 
the existence-form of man. Whatever right he 
had to an equal state of glory with God, that 
right he did not cling to, but surrendered, in 
order that he might become a servant. And 
upon this real self-emptying there followed a 

1 Phil. 2 : 6. 7. 

127 


THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 


real self-humiliation, wherein, being found in 
fashion as a man, he became obedient unto 
death, even the death of the cross . 1 It was on 
account of this, — and by “this” we must under- 
stand the entire actual operation of the self- 
denying, self-humbling, self-sacrificing mind of 
Christ, — it was for this reason, St. Paul de- 
clares, that “God highly exalted him, and gave 
unto him the name which is above every 
name .” 2 And I know not how to interpret 
such language with any reality of intelligence, 
unless it means that the present glory of the 
Son of God is in some true sense the result of 
his having become man and so fulfilled the 
will of God. 

This , view, which St. Paul condenses into a 
single pregnant “wherefore,” is expanded in 
the Epistle to the Hebrews. The object of 
this Epistle is to show the superiority of the 
priesthood and sacrifice of Christ, which are 
substantial and enduring, to the priesthood and 
sacrifice of the old dispensation, which were 
shadowy and transient. But the method which 
the writer follows is not to deny, but to assert 
the verity of Christ’s humanity. Without this 
he could not be the true priest nor offer the 
true sacrifice. “In all things it behoved him 
1 Phil. 2:8. 2 p^il. 2 . 9> 

128 


THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 


to be made like unto his brethren .” 1 “For we 
have not an high priest which cannot be touched 
with the feeling of our infirmities: but was in 
all points tempted like as we are, yet without 
sin .” 2 “Though he were a Son, yet learned 
he obedience by the things which he suffered, 
and being made perfect, he became the author 
of eternal salvation unto all them that obey 
him .” 3 This complete incarnation, this thor- 
ough trial under human conditions, this perfect 
discipline of obedience through suffering, was 
a humiliation. But it was in no sense a deg- 
radation. On the contrary, it was a crowning 
of Christ with glory and honour in order that 
he might taste death for every man. “For it 
became him, for whom are all things, and by 
whom are all things, in bringing many sons to 
glory, to make the captain of their salvation 
perfect through suffering .” 4 If the Epistle to 
the Hebrews teaches anything, it certainly 
teaches this. The humanity of Jesus was not 
the veiling but the unveiling of the divine glory. 
The limitations, temptations, and sufferings of 
manhood were the conditions under which alone 
Christ could accomplish the greatest work of 
the Deity, — the redemption of a sinful race. 

1 Heb. 2 : 17. 2 Heb. 4 : 15. 

8 Heb. 5 : 8, 9. 4 Heb. 2 : 9, 10. 

129 


THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 


The centre of the divine revelation and of the 
divine atonement was and is the human life of 
God. 


Ill 

Here, then, we may pause for a moment and 
try to sum up the conclusions to which the 
New Testament leads us in regard to the per- 
son of Christ. 

I am sincerely anxious not to be misunder- 
stood. On the one hand, I would not conceal 
for a moment my conviction that current theol- 
ogy has failed, very often and very largely, to 
do justice to the meaning of the Incarnation on 
the human side, and that we must go back to 
the image of Jesus Christ as it is reflected in 
the Gospels to purify, and refresh, and sim- 
plify our faith. We should not suffer any 
reverence for ancient definitions of doctrine, 
however well founded, nor any fear of incurring 
reproach and mistrust as innovators, to deter 
us from that necessary and loyal return to the 
reality of the Person in whom our creed centres 
and on whom it rests. To find Jesus anew, to 
see him again, as if for the first time, in the 
wondrous glory of his humility, is the secret 
of the revival of Christianity in every age. This 
is not innovation; it is renovation. 

130 


THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 


On the other hand, we have no right and we 
ought to have no inclination to insist exclusively 
upon any particular theory as the only possible 
explanation of the facts of the Incarnation. 
Every earnest and thoughtful man must feel 
that these facts are so profound and mysterious 
that the plummet of human reason cannot sound 
their ultimate depths. With all our thinking 
upon this subject, there must ever mingle a 
consciousness of insufficiency and a confession 
of ignorance. But with this confession of ig- 
norance there must go also a clear recognition 
of those portions of the truth which are un- 
questionably revealed in the New Testament. 
Three things are there made plain to faith. 

1. God is so closely related to man, and the 
likeness of God in man is so real, that the Di- 
vine Logos is able to descend by a free act of 
self-determining love into the lower estate of 
human existence, and humble himself to the 
conditions of manhood without losing his per- 
sonal identity. 

2 . The essence of the Gospel is its declara- 
tion of the fact that this act of condescension, 
of self-humiliation, actually has been performed, 
and that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God 
who has taken upon him the existence-form of 
a servant, and lived a truly human life, and 

131 


THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 


been obedient even unto death, in order to re- 
veal to the world the saving love of God. 

3. The distinctive attributes of personality 
(self-consciousness and self-determination) are 
not dual in Christ, as of two persons, the one 
divine and the other human, co-existing side by 
side in a double life. They are individual, and 
manifested as the life of one person. That per- 
son is the Son of God, who laid aside the glory 
which he had with the Father, and emptied 
himself, and so became the Son of man; and 
on account of this humiliation God hath highly 
exalted him and crowned him with glory and 
honour as the God-man forever. 

These are the points which are vital to the 
reality of the Gospel of the Incarnation. All 
theories which make these points clear, safe- 
guard the truth in its integrity and in its 
reconciling power. The question of the method 
of the divine humiliation and the human exal- 
tation of Christ, lies beyond these points. It 
is not necessary to insist upon any particular 
form of its solution. Indeed, it may well be 
that the profundity of the question, the in- 
herent mystery of the facts of life and person- 
ality with which it deals, and the limitations 
of human thought and language, preclude the 
possibility of a complete and final answer at 
present. 


132 


THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 


It must be frankly acknowledged that none 
of the solutions which have been propounded 
hitherto are free from serious perplexities. But 
it must be recognized with equal frankness that 
the theories which have been put forward in 
modern times, with new earnestness and power, 
by men of unquestionable loyalty to the Chris- 
tianity of the New Testament, who have sought 
to find a clear and positive meaning for the 
great word Kenosis , which St. Paul uses to de- 
scribe the self-emptying of Christ in the In- 
carnation, — theories which have been stigma- 
tized as kenotic , as if the name were enough to 
mark them as unorthodox, — are so far from 
being heretical that they have the rare merit 
of conserving and emphasizing a truth of sur- 
passing value, undoubtedly taught in the Bible, 
and too much neglected, if not practically de- 
nied, during many centuries of theological specu- 
lation. 

It may be that the distinctive attributes of 
personality are, abstractly considered, identical 
in God and man, so that, by the divine self- 
limitation in the Incarnation, they are actually 
unified, like two circles which have a common 
centre. It may be that the Son of God, being 
the eternal representative of the filial relation- 
ship within the Godhead, the symbol of the 
created within the uncreated, needed but to 
133 


THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 


surrender the form and status of the uncreated 
Son in order to assume, by the same act, the 
form and status which man as the created Son 
was intended to realize. It may be that the 
Incarnation was by deprivation, and that the 
Eternal Word renounced his divine mode of 
being, and entered into life, without omnis- 
cience, omnipresence, or omnipotence, as an 
unconscious babe. It matters little in what 
form of words we try to express the transcen- 
dent truth. But it matters much, it is su- 
premely important for the integrity of our 
Gospel and for its influence upon the heart of 
this doubting age, that we should hold fast to 
the fact that the life of Jesus of Nazareth is 
simply and sincerely the human life of God. 

The time is at hand when this simple and 
profound view of Christ, which beholds in him 
the God-man in whom Deity is self-limited and 
humbled in order that humanity may be di- 
vinely exalted and perfected, must break 
through the clouds which have obscured it, 
and become the leading light of religion and 
theology. The life of Christ needs to be re- 
studied and rewritten under this luminous 
guidance, in absolute and unhesitating loyalty 
to the facts as they lie before our eyes in the 
Gospels. The doctrine of Christ’s person needs 
134 


THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 


to be restated in this light. It must include 
not only the truth of a sameness of nature and 
experience with God; but also the equal truth 
of a sameness with man, which the future is 
to unfold as the universality of Christ’s man- 
hood is exhibited through his progressive tri- 
umphs among all the races of men and all the 
modes of human life. The humanity of the 
incarnate Christ must stand out as clear, as 
positive, as indubitable, as his Deity. Nay, 
more, it must stand where the New Testament 
puts it, in the foreground of faith. For it is 
only in this humanity that we can truly find 
the Son of God who loved us and gave himself 
for us. 

Life is now the regnant idea; personality its 
utmost expression. It is in the facts of life, 
its secret potencies, its mysterious limitations 
in germ and seed, its magnificent unfoldings in 
the process of development that we must seek 
our comparisons for the Incarnation. And the 
very search will bring us face to face with the 
conviction that life in all its manifestations 
transcends analysis without ceasing to be the 
object of knowledge. 

We know many facts and forms of life whose 
modes of becoming we cannot imagine. It is 
just as impossible for us to conceive how the 
135 


THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 


life of the oak, root and trunk and branch and 
leaf, form and colour and massive strength, is 
all folded in the tiny, colourless, unshaped seed, 
as it is to conceive how the life of God is em- 
bodied in the man Christ Jesus. But the dif- 
ficulty of conceiving the manner of this infold- 
ing, this embodiment, does not destroy for us 
the reality of the life. Indeed, if we could ex- 
plain it entirely, if we could trace it perfectly 
as in a diagram, if we could observe it com- 
pletely, as in one of those beautiful models of 
flowers which a skilful artist has recently made 
to illustrate his lectures on botany, we should 
know that it was not life, but only a picture of 
it. The picture is useful, but it is not vital. 
The metaphor has its value, but it falls far short 
of the truth. Self-beggary and self -emptying 
are but “ words thrown out towards” an un- 
imaginable but not unreasonable manifestation 
of the Divine Love as life. The reality to which 
they point us is the Son of God descending to 
live under all the conditions and limitations of 
energy and consciousness which are proper to 
the Son of man: the Word made flesh and 
dwelling among us, like unto his brethren in 
all things. 


136 


THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 


IV 

It is impossible to overestimate the signif- 
icance of this view for the present age, and the 
importance of setting it forth as a living truth 
in the language of to-day. It is the only view 
which gives us any ground of reality for our 
faith in the kinship of man with God. If the 
Son of God, who is the image of the Father, by 
laying aside the outward prerogatives of his 
divine mode of existence, actually becomes 
human, then, and only then, the divine image 
in which man was created is no mere figure of 
speech, but a substantial likeness of spiritual 
being. There is a true fellowship between our 
souls and our Father in heaven. Virtue is not 
a vain dream, but a definite striving towards 
his perfection. Revelation is not a deception, 
but a message from him who knows all to those 
who know only a part. Prayer is not an empty 
form, but a real communion. 

“ Speak to Him , thou , far He hears , and Spirit with Spirit 
can meet: 

Closer is He than breathing , and nearer than hands and 
feet ” 

This view of the spiritual relation of man to 
God cannot possibly have any foundation in 
fact, deep enough and strong enough to with- 
137 


THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 


stand the sweeping floods of scepticism, unless 
it builds upon the rock of a veritable Incarna- 
tion. The discoveries of modern science, en- 
larging enormously our conceptions of the phys- 
ical universe, have not only put man (as we said 
in the first lecture) in a position to receive a 
larger and loftier vision of the glory of God, 
but they have made such a vision indispensable. 
And they have emphasised, with overwhelming 
force, the form in which that vision must come 
in order to meet our needs and strengthen faith 
for its immense task. If we are not to be ut- 
terly belittled and crushed by the contempla- 
tion of the vast mass of matter and the tremen- 
dous play of force by which we are surrounded; 
if we are still to hold that the vital is greater 
than the mechanical, the moral than the ma- 
terial, the spiritual than the physical; if we 
are to maintain the old position of all noble 
and self -revering thought, that “man is greater 
than the universe,” — there is nothing that can 
so profoundly confirm and establish us in that 
faith, there is nothing that can so surely protect 
and save us from “the distorting influences of 
our own discoveries,” as the revelation of the 
Supreme Being in an unmistakably vital, moral, 
spiritual, and human form. 

Such a revelation at once rectifies, purifies, 
138 


THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 


and elevates our view of God himself. For if 
the Son of God can surrender omnipresence, 
omniscience, and omnipotence without destroy- 
ing his personal identity, then the central es- 
sence of the Deity is neither infinite wisdom 
nor infinite power, but perfect holiness and 
perfect goodness. And so from the very lowest 
valley of humiliation we catch clear sight of 
the very loftiest summit of theology, the shin- 
ing truth that God is Love. 

In the light of this truth we behold also the 
highest perfection of man and the path which 
leads to it. Love is the fulfilling of the law, 
and the supreme pattern of love is the example 
of Christ. And whether we look at it from the 
divine side as the supreme self-sacrifice of God, 
or from the human side as the complete obe- 
dience of man, everything depends upon the 
genuineness and sincerity of this example. Un- 
less the Son of God truly became man, the In- 
carnation cannot be “a revelation of human 
duties.” What strength could we draw from 
his victory over temptation if he was not ex- 
posed as we are to the assaults of evil? What 
consolation could we draw from his patience 
if he was not a man of sorrows and acquainted 
with grief? “ Jesus Christ,” says one of the 
greatest of French theologians, “is not the 
139 


THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 


Son of God hidden in the Son of man retaining 
all the attributes of Divinity in a latent state. 
This would be to admit an irreducible duality 
which would withdraw him from the normal 
conditions of human life. His obedience would 
become illusory, and his example would be with- 
out application to our race. No, when the 
Word became flesh, he humbled himself, he 
put off his glory, being rich he made himself 
poor, and became as one of us, only without 
sin, that he might pass through the moral con- 
flict with all the risks of freedom.” When we 
see him thus, we know what it means to follow 
him and to be like him. 

Finally, the whole value of the Atonement, 
in its reconciling influence on the heart of man, 
in its exhibition of the heart of God, depends 
upon the actuality of the Incarnation. If he 
who died on Calvary was a mere theophany, 
like the angel of Jehovah who appeared to 
Abraham, then his death was merely a dra- 
matic spectacle. The body of Jesus was broken, 
but God was not touched. But if the Father 
truly spared not his own Son, but delivered 
him up for us all, then the Father also suffered 
by sympathy, making an invisible sacrifice, an 
infinite surrender of love for our sakes. Then 
the Son also suffered, making a visible sacri- 
140 


THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 


fice, and pouring out his soul unto death to 
redeem us from the fear of death and the 
power of sin. And this becomes real to our 
faith and potent upon our souls only when 
we see the human life of God , agonizing in the 
garden, tortured in the judgment-hall, and ex- 
piring upon the cross. Then we can say 

“Oh Love Divine ! that stooped to share 
Our sharpest pang , our bitterest tear ” 

Then we can look up to a God who is not im- 
passible, as the speculations of men have falsely 
represented him, but passible, and therefore 
full of infinite capacities of pure sorrow and 
saving sympathy. Then the dumb and sullen 
resentment which rises in noble minds at the 
thought of a Universe in which there is so much 
helpless pain and hopeless grief, created by an 
immovable Being who has never felt and can 
never feel either pain or grief, — that sense of 
moral repulsion from the idea of an unsuffering 
and unsympathetic Creator which is, and al- 
ways has been, the deepest, darkest spring of 
doubt, fades away, and we behold a God who 
became human in order that he might bear, 
though pure and sinless, all our pains and all 
our griefs. 

Thus men who believe in the human life of 
141 


THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 


God can speak to the doubting age, as David 
sings to the disillusioned, downcast, despondent 
Hebrew king, in Robert Browning’s splendid 
poem of “Saul.” The word, sought in vain 
among the glories of nature, among the joys of 
human intercourse, the word of faith and hope 
and love and life, comes to us, leaps upon us, 
flashes through us. 

“See the King — 1 would help him, hut cannot, the wishes 
fall through . 

Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor to 
enrich. 

To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would — blowing 
which, 

I know that my service is perfect . Oh, speak through me 
now! 

Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst Thou — 
so wilt Thou! 

So shall crown Thee the topmost, ineff ablest, uttermost 
crown — 

And Thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor 
down 

One spot for the creature to stand in ! It is by no breath. 

Turn of eye, wave of hand, that salvation joins issue with 
death ! 

As Thy Love is discovered almighty, almighty be proved 

Thy power, that exists with and for it, of being beloved ! 

He who did most, shall bear most ; the strongest shall stand 
the most weak . 

9 Tis the weakness in strength, that I cry for! my flesh, 
that I seek 


142 


THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD 

In the Godhead ! I seek and I find it 0 Saul , it shall 
he 

A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me. 
Thou shalt love and he loved hy y forever ; a Hand like this 
hand 

Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee l See the 
Christ stand!” 


143 


y 


THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY IN 
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

TOREACH CHRIST, is the apostolic watch- 
word that rings to-day, with all the force 
and charm of a new commandment, through 
the heart of a Church, which has felt, more 
deeply than it has yet confessed, the age-per- 
vading chill of a winter of doubt and discontent. 
The very entrance of that reviving word has 
already brought a glow of enthusiasm into the 
Christian life, and caused new blossoms of hope 
and love, manifold and beautiful activities of 
help and healing, to appear in the earth. It 
seems as if some fresh and secret tide of vital- 
ity were flowing through the veins of Christen- 
dom, and breaking everywhere towards the 
light in deeds of charity and enterprises of 
mercy. Hospitals, asylums, red cross societies, 
rescue missions, salvation armies, spring into 
existence as if by magic. Never has there been 
a time when Christian men have tried to do 
so much for their fellow-men in the name and 
for the sake of Christ. Never has there been 
144 


THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY 


a time when they have recognized so clearly 
and fully that there was so much yet to be done. 
It is an age of secular doubt, as many other 
ages have been. But it is also an age of Chris- 
tian beneficence, as hardly any other age has 
been. And this beneficence is not self-satis- 
fied and complacent. It is self-reproachful, 
and, in its best expressions, nobly discontented 
with all that has been accomplished hitherto. 
It seeks, not always wisely, but with splendid 
eagerness, for plans which shall lead beyond 
the relief, to the prevention of human suffer- 
ing. It aims to bring about not only the im- 
mediate mitigation, but also the ultimate aboli- 
tion, of war. It demands that charity shall be 
translated into the terms of national, as well as 
of individual life. It will not be satisfied until 
in some real and palpable sense the kingdom 
of this world is become the kingdom of our 
Lord and of his Christ . 1 

Now this splendid expansion of Christian 
activities, evident by many signs to all thought- 
ful observers, depends for its power and per- 
manence upon the setting forth of Christ, 
vividly, personally, practically, as the pattern 
of all virtue and the Prince of Peace among 
men. The sense of absolute confidence in him 


1 Rev. 11 : 15. 

145 


THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY 


as the perfect example of goodness, and of thor- 
ough loyalty to him as the Master of noble life, 
is the hidden reservoir of moral force. The 
organized charities of Christendom are the dis- 
tributing system. 

But in all this renewal and expansion of what 
is well called practical Christianity, there is, if 
I mistake not, a danger, or at least a serious 
possibility, of loss. The life of man is not only 
practical, it is also intellectual. His relations 
to his fellow-men are important, but his rela- 
tion to truth is no less important. He cannot 
help acting; neither can he help thinking. 
When his thinking is divorced from his acting, 
when he has one standard for truth and a differ- 
ent standard for conduct, he is like a house 
divided against itself. If the Christianity of 
to-day, by dwelling exclusively or too much on 
the ethical side of the Gospel as a beautiful 
and beneficent rule of conduct illustrated by a 
perfect Example, tends to ignore the intellec- 
tual necessities of man and fails to realize that 
it has a message to deliver in the realm of truth 
as well as in the realm of righteousness, it can- 
not meet the deepest wants of the present age. 
Indeed, it may even aggravate those wants and 
make them more painful. It may seem to give 
assent, by silence, to the desperate assumption 
146 


THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY 


of scepticism that the unseen world is unknown 
and unknowable, even to the most perfect of 
men. It may foster the sad feeling that the 
reality of religion is beyond our reach and that 
we must content ourselves with the convenient 
dreams of virtue. It may preach, in effect, a 
Christ whose character and conduct are to be 
accepted as infallible, but whose thoughts and 
convictions in regard to God and the soul and 
the future life are mere fallacies and illusions. 

Preach Christy if it is to be a true watchword 
for our ministry to the present age, must be 
cleared and vivified in our consciousness. We 
must know what we mean by it, and we must 
try to know what we ought to mean. We must 
ask ourselves again and again whether the thing 
that we do mean is always quite, or even ap- 
proximately, the thing that we ought to mean 
when we use this precious and powerful phrase. 
It was commonly employed, say fifty years 
ago, to describe by way of distinction a pres- 
entation of Jesus which dwelt chiefly or entirely 
upon his death as the vicarious sacrifice for sin. 
It is frequently employed now as if it meant 
little or nothing more than the graphic descrip- 
tion of Christ’s life and actions as the supreme 
type of virtue and love. But surely to preach 
Christ exclusively in either of these ways is to 
147 


THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY 


divide him. It is not enough to have a Chris- 
toeentric theology. It is not enough to have a 
Christocentric morality. We must not only 
put him at the centre; but we must also draw 
the circumference so that it shall embrace the 
whole of human life. 

If Christ is the Lamb of God that taketh 
away the sin of the world , 1 he is also the true 
Light which lighteth every man that cometh 
into the world . 2 If he is the fulfilment of all 
dim prophecies of good, he is also the head and 
source of a new unfolding of spiritual vision. 
If he is the way and the life, he is also the truth . 3 
If he is immortal love, regenerating the affec- 
tions, he is also immortal wisdom reorganizing 
the thoughts, and immortal power strengthen- 
ing the wills, of men. If his heart is to be the 
norm of our feeling, his mind is to be the norm 
of our thinking. If he is the herald and founder 
of a new and celestial dominion upon earth, 
he is also the source of authority in the king- 
dom of heaven. 

I 

The idea of the kingdom of heaven, as an 
actual reign of God over living men, in which 
all ancient anticipations of good are accom- 

1 St. John 1 : 29. 2 St. John 1 : 9. 

148 


3 St. John 14 : 6. 


THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY 


plished and a new state of virtue and blessed- 
ness is established on earth, was foremost and 
dominant in the teaching of Jesus . 1 It was 
the keynote of his ministry. Everything that 
he said, everything that he did, was in harmony 
with this master thought. 

It is passing strange to see how often and 
how utterly this keynote has been changed in 
the variations which men have woven about the 
original theme of Christianity; and how far 
we are, even yet, from hearing it clearly, and 
sounding it with dominant fulness in the music 
of religion. At times the kingdom of heaven 
has been identified with the visible church as 
an outward embodiment of power in the world. 
And surely this interpretation is far enough 
away from the thought of Christ, who taught 
expressly that the kingdom was invisible and 
inward. At other times men have removed 
their conception from the present to the future, 
and looked for its realization in the life of the 
redeemed after death, or in the second coming 
of Christ to reign in millennial glory. And 
surely this interpretation is equally remote 

1 The word “kingdom” is used in the Gospels more than a hundred 
times to express the new condition of human life which Christ came to 
announce and establish. In St. Matthew’s Gospel the favourite phrase 
is “the kingdom of heaven.” St. Mark and St. Luke use “the kingdom 
of God.” 


149 


THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY 


from Christ’s teaching, at the very outset of 
his ministry and all through its course, that 
the kingdom of heaven was at hand, that it 
had already come near to men, and was lying 
all around them, close to them, pressing upon 
them from every side so that many were al- 
ready entering into it and dwelling within it. 

The unreality and incompleteness of these 
two opposite interpretations of the kingdom 
produced their natural results. The idea fell 
out of its true place in Christian thought. It 
became obscure, subordinate, and was finally 
almost obliterated. 

But in recent times there has been an in- 
tense revival of interest in this idea and an im- 
mense amount of good work done in the study 
and explication of it. Such books as those which 
Dr. James S. Candlish and Professor A. B. 
Bruce have written upon “The Kingdom of 
God,” are valuable gifts to Christian literature. 
Yet I will frankly confess that these books, and 
others like them, seem to me rather to point 
the way than to reach the goal. The fulness of 
the conception of the kingdom of heaven is 
not yet restored in current theology. There is 
still a great deal of work to be done in this di- 
rection by the Christian thinker. The vision 
of the kingdom is obscured, the proclamation 
150 


THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY 


of the kingdom is weakened, because it is still 
presented too exclusively as a kingdom of grace, 
and not with equal emphasis as a kingdom of 
truth: it is set up too partially as a standard 
for the character and conduct of men, and not 
with equal clearness as a standard for their 
thoughts and convictions. 

One reason of this one-sidedness, it seems to 
me, lies in the fact that we have hitherto been 
looking almost entirely to the first three Gos- 
pels as the source of our knowledge of the true 
meaning of the kingdom of heaven. But the 
Fourth Gospel, if indeed it be, as the best mod- 
ern scholars say it is, “the most faithful image 
and memorial of Jesus that any man could pro- 
duce,” must be no less important, no less signif- 
icant in the light which it throws upon this 
controlling idea of his mind. And when we 
turn to study it with this aim in view, we find 
at once that it gives us what we need. It com- 
pletes and rounds out the record of the three 
other Gospels. It answers the questions which 
they suggest. And it is only when we take the 
fourfold narrative in its entirety that we begin 
to catch sight of the satisfying and convincing 
fulness of the idea of the kingdom of heaven. 

This idea underlies the whole Gospel accord- 
ing to St. John. It is no less fundamental, no 
151 


THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY 


less necessary here than it is in the Synoptic 
Gospels. It is presented in different forms, 
because the type of the writer’s mind and the 
purpose of his book are different. But it is 
the same idea. And this presentation of it is 
essential to its completeness. 

In the Synoptics we have the conditions of 
entrance into the kingdom, a child-like spirit , 1 
faith , 2 repentance , 3 and obedience . 4 In St. 
John we have the spiritual birth by which alone 
those requisites are made possible . 5 In the 
Synoptics we have the laws of the kingdom . 6 
In St. John we have the new life in which alone 
those laws can be fulfilled . 7 In the Synoptics 
we have the parables and pictures of the king- 
dom . 8 In St. John we have the inmost sense 
of those parables, spoken directly to the soul, 
in words of which Christ himself says “they 
are spirit, and they are life.” 9 In the Synoptics 
we have the new order of human society in the 
imitation by the disciples of Christ’s obedience 
to the will of God . 10 In St. John we have the 
organizing principle of that new order in Christ’s 


1 St, Matt. 18 : 3. 2 St. Matt. 9 : 22; St. Mark 10 : 52. 

3 St. Luke 13:3. * St. Matt. 5 : 20. 

6 St. John 3:5. ® The Sermon on the Mount. 

7 St. John 6 : 22-65. 

8 St. Matt. 13, 21, 25; St. Luke 13, 17, 19, etc. 

9 St. John 6 : 63; 8 : 12-51. 10 St. Matt. 12 : 50. 


152 


THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY 


revelation of himself to the disciples as the way, 
the truth, and the life . 1 In the Synoptics we 
have the supremacy of Christ’s example over 
men’s hearts. In St. John we have the suprem- 
acy of Christ’s teachings over men’s minds. 

Of course, I do not mean to say that either 
of these aspects of the kingdom is confined ex- 
clusively to the source in which it is most fully 
and clearly exhibited. But this is what I mean. 
The Synoptics give us the first and simplest 
description of the nature of the kingdom. St. 
John gives us the fullest and clearest revelation 
of the mind of the King. We cannot under- 
stand the former without the latter. We can- 
not enter into the full meaning of the initial 
proclamation of Jesus, when he walked beside 
the Sea of Galilee crying “The kingdom of 
heaven has come near,” 2 unless we go on with 
him to the judgment-hall and hear him give 
his final answer to Pilate: “Thou sayest that 
I am a King; to this end have I been born, and 
to this end am I come into the world, that I 
should bear witness unto the truth; every one 
that is of the truth heareth my voice.” 3 

When we stand at this point, when we ac- 
cept this declaration as the key to unlock and 
open the inmost meaning of the manifestation 

* St. Matt. 4 : 17. 3 St. John 18 : 37. 

153 


»St. John 14: 6. 


THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY 


of the Father in the human life of the Son, we 
begin to apprehend the inexhaustible scope and 
significance of our call to preach Christ to an 
age of doubt. It is a gospel not only for the 
affections, but also for the intellect. It takes 
up his words as well as his works and makes 
them vital in the lives of men. It conceives 
and proclaims the kingdom of heaven as some- 
thing more than “the reign of divine love exer- 
cised by God in his grace over human hearts 
believing in his love and constrained thereby 
to yield him grateful affection and devoted 
service.” It is also the reign of divine truth 
exercised through a faithful witness over the 
minds of men who submit to his guidance and 
are led by him into inward peace and unity of 
thought. And the source of authority in this 
kingdom of heaven, which is equally a realm of 
truth and a realm of grace, is Jesus the Christ, 
whose doctrine, as well as his example, is ulti- 
mate and supreme. 

II 

Let us observe in passing that we have pre- 
cisely the same basis to rest upon in our preach- 
ing of the doctrine of Jesus as in our preaching 
of his character and life. If historical criticism 
gives us good reason to believe, as all candid 

154 


THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY 

inquirers now admit, that the four Gospels con- 
tain a veritable picture of an actual personage 
who once lived on earth, there is equally good 
reason to believe that they have preserved for 
us a trustworthy account of his teaching in its 
substance and spirit. If we can justly claim 
that his character is so perfect and transcendent 
that no man of that age, however gifted or 
learned, and least of all such men as the writers 
of the New Testament, could possibly have in- 
vented it; we can make the same claim, with 
equal justice, for the body of doctrine which 
is attributed to Christ. In its coherence, its 
clarity, its sublimity, and its universality it 
altogether surpasses the mental abilities and 
the religious insight of the writers of the four 
Gospels. Indeed, it is frankly confessed that 
the disciples of Jesus were so far from being 
able to invent his doctrine, that they actually 
misunderstood and misinterpreted many of its 
truths when they first heard them. It was 
contrary to their prejudices and expectations. 
They did not put it into his mouth. He re- 
vealed it to their minds. Their faith in it 
rested upon his personal authority. And it 
was only as they kept company with him and 
followed him, receiving his word into their souls 
and translating it into their lives, that it be- 
155 


THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY 

came to them luminous and satisfying and con- 
vincing. 

We are entitled, or rather we are compelled, 
to regard the teaching of Jesus as an objective 
fact just as much as his life and character. The 
record of it bears on its face the overwhelming 
evidence of verity. All the results of literary 
criticism are squarely against the supposition 
that such a doctrine as that which is presented 
to us under his name in the four Gospels, could 
ever have been pieced together out of the 
thoughts and imaginations of widely separated 
and divergent minds, and attributed to an un- 
known and perhaps mythical Master. It is 
not a mosaic; it is a living unity. It is not a 
creation of faith; it is the creator of faith. The 
hypothesis that four men agreed, or happened, 
to gather together, out of the Hebrew prophets, 
and the heathen philosophers, and the mys- 
terious and inexplicable inner consciousness of 
the new-born Christian churches, certain beau- 
tiful ideas in regard to God and the soul and 
the future life, and ascribe them to Jesus, ut- 
terly breaks down at the touch of reality. The 
central, unifying, formative quality of the teach- 
ing of Christ is the one thing that is most evi- 
dent in the record. It is emphasised by all the 
phenomena of growth, of vital development, 
156 


THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY 


of deepening power, which may be traced from 
the sermon in the synagogue at Nazareth to 
the discourse in the upper room at Jerusalem. 
It shines out unmistakably through all the 
living variety of impressions which it made 
upon various minds, and through all the con- 
sequent many-sidedness of the report which is 
given of it. Not more certainly did the char- 
acter of Christ inspire and unite the lives of 
his followers than his doctrine illuminated and 
controlled their beliefs. The only view which 
meets the facts is that Jesus really lived, and 
really taught thus and so, as he is presented 
to us in the Gospels. 

This brings us at once to the most important 
feature in the record of his teaching. It is not 
given to us in the form of an abstract system, 
a treatise on theology, or a summary of doc- 
trine, written down by the hand of Jesus. He 
himself made no record of his words. Only 
once do we see him writing, — in the beautiful 
episode which a later tradition has added to the 
eighth chapter of St. John’s Gospel. Histori- 
cal or not, the incident is profoundly sugges- 
tive. For Jesus wrote not with a pen upon 
enduring parchment, nor with a stylus upon 
imperishable brass 

“He stooped 

And wrote upon the unrecording ground.” 

157 


THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY 


He would not leave even a single line of manu- 
script where his followers could preserve it with 
literal reverence and worship it as a sacred 
relic. He chose to inscribe his teaching upon 
no other leaves than those which are folded 
within the human soul. He chose to trust his 
words to the faithful keeping of memory and 
love; and he said of them, with sublime con- 
fidence, that they should never pass away . 1 
He chose that the truth which he declared and 
the life which he lived should never be divided, 
but that they should go down together through 
the ages. 

And this is precisely what has come to pass. 
The Church in past ages has often been inclined 
to abstract the doctrines of Christianity con- 
cerning the person and work of Christ from 
their union with his human life, and to condense 
them into a purely formal system of dogma for 
the intellect. The Church in the present age 
shows at least a tendency to separate the image 
of Jesus from the truths which he taught, and 
hold him up to men merely as an ideal of holi- 
ness and goodness. But the one barrier that 
stands firm against both these false tendencies 
is the marvellous narrative of the Gospels, in 
which the life and the doctrine of Christ are 

1 St. Mark 13 : 31. 

158 


THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY 


woven together, one and inseparable, like a 
robe without seam. 

How can we understand his grace, unless we 
accept his truth? How can we appreciate his 
truth, unless we receive his grace? At every 
step, his action is interpreted and explained by 
his words. He trusts in Providence, and he 
commands his disciples to trust, not merely be- 
cause submissive confidence is a beautiful and 
happy thing, but because he knows and de- 
clares that God is really a Father, worthy to 
be trusted . 1 He prays, secretly and openly; 
secretly because he is sure that God hears him 
always, and openly because he would fain give 
this assurance to others . 2 He seeks the sinful 
and the lost, not merely because such a minis- 
try is lovely and gracious, but because he knows 
and declares that it is the will of God, and that 
there is more joy in heaven over one sinner 
that repenteth than over ninety-and-nine just 
men that need no repentance . 3 He cares for 
the bodies of men and he relieves their wants, 
but he cares infinitely more for their souls and 
he teaches them to care more, because he knows 
that the soul is capable of immortality and more 
precious than all that this world can give . 4 He 

1 St. Matt. 6 : 25-30. 2 St. John 11 : 41, 42. 

3 St. Luke 15 : 7. 4 St. John 6 : 27; St. Mark 8 : 36, 37. 

159 


THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY 


moves willingly and obediently to the cross, 
not because it is inevitable, not because resig- 
nation is the crown of virtue, but because he 
knows and declares that this is the sacrifice 
appointed for him as the Christ, the laying 
down of his life as a ransom for many, the lift- 
ing up by which he is to draw all men unto him- 
self . 1 He goes down into death with unshaken 
courage, not because it is a fine thing to be 
brave, but because he know^s and declares that 
he is returning to the Father and that he will 
bring those who love him to be with him where 
he is forever . 2 

Now these are declarations of great truths. 
If we deny them, if we make them uncertain, 
the life which was built upon them has no mean- 
ing, no substance, no power in it. It becomes 
a splendid illusion, a heroic mistake. But if 
we accept them, then, and only then, that life 
becomes the rock of our confidence, the sub- 
stance of things hoped for and the evidence of 
things not seen. For it was on the knowledge 
of these things that Jesus actually founded 
his own character and his conduct. It was by 
believing thus and so, and by living up to his 
belief, that he was made perfect. And it was 

1 St. Mark 9 : 12; St. Matt. 20 : 28; St. John 12 : 32. 

2 St. John 14 : 1-3. 


160 


THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY 


by teaching his disciples to believe thus and 
so that he would bind them to follow his ex- 
ample and inspire them to share his life. “ Who- 
soever heareth these sayings of mine and doeth 
them, I will liken him unto a wise man which 
built his house upon a rock.” 1 “Now ye are 
clean through the word which I have spoken 
unto you.” “If ye abide in me, and my words 
abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will and it 
shall be done unto you.” 2 

Ill 

The importance which Christ ascribed to 
his words as the authoritative revelation of 
unseen verities to the confused and darkened 
minds of men, cannot be denied or overlooked 
by any one who reads the Gospels candidly and 
intelligently. It is true, indeed, that he ex- 
pressly disclaimed the idea that his doctrine 
was created, or invented, or even discovered 
by himself. He said, “My doctrine is not mine 
but his that sent me,” 3 “All things that I have 
heard of my Father I have made known unto 
you.” 4 But it is equally true that he claimed 
an absolute infallibility for the message which 


1 St. Matt. 7 : 24. 
a St. John 7 : 16. 


161 


2 St. John 15 : 3. 7. 
* St. John 15 : 15. 


THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY 


was revealed in him, committed unto him, and 
delivered by him. This claim is made with 
equal force in the Synoptics and in St. John. 
“No one knoweth who the Son is, save the 
Father; and who the Father is, save the Son, 
and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to re- 
veal him .” 1 “We speak that we do know, and 
bear witness of that we have seen .” 2 This is 
not the language that an honest and conscien- 
tious teacher would use to describe his religious 
opinions or his spiritual hopes. The wisest and 
the best of men have always hesitated to as- 
sume this tone of certainty in regard to their 
deepest reflections upon the mysteries of being. 
But from first to last this tone marks the teach- 
ing of Jesus. “They were astonished at His 
teaching; for he taught them as having au- 
thority, and not as the scribes .” 3 

It is evident that he intended to speak thus. 
For nothing is more striking in the manner of 
his teaching than the absence of all reliance 
upon corroborative testimony or traditional 
support. He did not seek to defend his posi- 
tions with a formidable array of great names. 
He did not make a long catena of quotations 
from learned sources. He gave out his doc- 
trine from the depth of his own consciousness, 

1 St. Luke 10 : 22. 2 St. John 3:11. 

162 


3 St. Mark 1 : 22. 


THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY 

as a flower breathes its odour, fresh, pure, orig- 
inal, and convincing. He certainly felt a Divine 
inspiration in the ancient Hebrew Scriptures. 
The law and the prophets conveyed to him the 
word of God. He used them on certain occa- 
sions to repel the assaults of evil, as in the temp- 
tation in the wilderness. He used them on other 
occasions to convince and convict the Scribes 
and Pharisees out of their own Scriptures. But 
he never rested upon them as the sole and suf- 
ficient basis of his doctrine. He was not a com- 
mentator on truths already revealed. He was 
a revealer of new truth. His teaching was not 
the exposition; it was the text. And this higher 
revelation not only fulfilled, but also surpassed, 
the old; replacing the temporal by the eternal, 
the figurative by the factual, the literal by the 
spiritual, the imperfect by the perfect. How 
often Jesus quoted from the Old Testament in 
order to show that it was already old and in- 
sufficient; that its forms of speech and rules 
of conduct were like the husk of the seed which 
must be shattered by the emergence of the liv- 
ing germ ! His doctrine was in fact a moral and 
intellectual daybreak for the world. He did 
far more than supply a novel system of con- 
duction for an ancient light. He sent forth 
from himself a new illumination, transcending 
163 


THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY 


all that had gone before, as the sunrise over- 
floods the pale glimmering of the morning star 
set like a beacon of promise upon the coast of 
dawn. 

He did not rely upon reasoning for the proof 
of his doctrine. He put no trust in the com- 
pulsion of logic, in the keenness of dialectics. 
We look in vain among his words for an exhibi- 
tion of the “evidences of Christianity.” He 
did not endeavour to demonstrate the existence 
of God or the immortality of the soul. What 
he said was meant to be its own evidence. His 
method was not apologetic; it was declaratory. 

“He argued not , but preached , and conscience did the rest” 

The result of this is marvellous and magnificent. 
His teaching is cleared and disentangled from 
all that is temporary and transient in human 
thought. If he had reasoned with men, it must 
have been done upon the premisses and in the 
forms of philosophy current in that age. Other- 
wise he could not have reached their intelligence, 
his reasoning would have been of none effect. 
But because he passed by all these processes 
and left them on one side while his doctrine 
moved simply, directly, and majestically to the 
heart of the truth, it comes to us to-day free, 
and unencumbered by any of those theories of 
164 


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physical science, of psychology, of political 
economy, which the growth of knowledge has 
changed, discredited, or discarded. His teach- 
ing is neither ancient nor modern, neither de- 
ductive nor inductive, neither Jewish nor Greek. 
It is universal, enduring, valid for all minds and 
for all times. There are no more difficulties 
in the way of accepting it now than there were 
when it was first delivered. It fits the spiritual 
needs of the present as closely as it fitted the 
spiritual needs of the first century. It car- 
ries the same attractions, the same credentials 
in the Western Hemisphere as it carried in the 
Eastern. It stands out as clearly from all 
the later, as it did from all the earlier, philoso- 
phies. It finds the soul as inevitably to-day 
as it did at first. And the men of this age who 
hear Christ can only say, as his disciples said 
long ago, “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou 
hast the words of eternal life .” 1 

And yet how few are those words, compared 
with the utterances of other teachers. How 
small in compass is the doctrine of Jesus as it 
has come down to us. Eighty pages of a duo- 
decimo book will hold all of his recorded dis- 
courses and the story of his life. Other words 
he must have spoken while he was on earth, 

1 St. John 6 : 68. 

165 


THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY 


but I doubt not that they moved within the 
same circle. For even in the present record 
we find the same truths recurring again and 
again, expressed in different language, arranged 
in different sequence, as the evangelists retrace, 
each from his own point of view, the memory 
of the things which Jesus taught to the multi- 
tudes and to his disciples. The literature of 
the world holds no other doctrine so limited in 
bulk, so limitless in meaning. 

The teaching of Christ differs from that of 
all other masters in its fontal quality . It is 
comprised in a little space, but it has an infinite 
fulness. Its utterance is closely bounded, but 
its significance is inexhaustible. The sacred 
books of other religions, the commentaries and 
expositions on the Christian religion, spread 
before us a vast and intricate expanse, like 
lakes of truth mixed with error, stretching away 
into the distance, arm after arm, bay after bay, 
until we despair of being able even to explore 
their coasts and trace their windings. When 
we come back to Christ, we find, not an inland 
sea of doctrine, but a clear fountain of living 
water, springing up into everlasting life. 

Calm, pure, unfathomable, it is never clouded 
and it never fails. The inspiration of other 
teachers rises and falls like an intermittent 
166 


THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY 


spring. To-day it is brimming full; to-mor- 
row it is empty and dry. But the truth that 
flows from Jesus is constant and unvarying. 
The Spirit always rests upon him. The Father 
is always with him. Out of the deep serenity 
of his soul, as from some secret vale of peace 
high among the eternal hills, the spring of truth 
wells up forever, and forever the crystal stream 
runs down to refresh and revive the souls of 
men. 

New meanings come out of the teaching of 
Jesus in every land and in every age. New 
stars are mirrored in its depths. New flowers 
blossom on its banks. New fields of love are 
fertilized by its waters. It is not that each 
succeeding century and race adds something of 
its own to the doctrine of Christ. It is that 
each finds in that source something which was 
meant to become its own, and so to satisfy its 
deepest needs. The old questions are repeated 
in new words, and the new answer comes in the 
old words. The truth as it is in Jesus does 
not have to be changed and adapted to fit it 
for a world-wide missionary enterprise. It 
needs only to be purified from the things that 
men have mingled with it, restored to the sim- 
plicity that is in Christ, and it proves itself as 
fresh, as satisfying, as life-bestowing to the 
167 


THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY 


thirsty soul in America or in the islands of the 
sea, as it did in Galilee or on the hillsides of 
Judea. 

When we ask ourselves why it is that the 
doctrine of the Master has this enduring, self- 
renewing, fontal character, I think we must 
find the answer in the fact that it simply bears 
witness, with a directness and inevitableness 
altogether unparalleled, to the actual existence 
of a spiritual world corresponding to the spiri- 
tual faculties and aspirations of men. It does 
not turn aside to discuss metaphysical prob- 
lems or theological subtleties. The distinction 
between the natural and the supernatural does 
not even appear in the teaching of Jesus. There 
may, or there may not, be such a distinction. 
If there is, he at least does not think it impor- 
tant enough to speak of it. The one thing of 
which he wishes to make men sure is that the 
same God who sends his sunshine and his rain 
upon the evil and upon the good, the same God 
whose bounty feeds the birds of the air and 
clothes the lilies of the field with beauty, hears 
in secret the prayers of the penitent and be- 
lieving and rewards them openly. The ques- 
tion of the how and the where of the life after 
death is not even touched in the teaching of 
Jesus. It matters little. The one thing that 
168 


THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY 


he declares with unfaltering certainty is the 
reality of that life. The one thing that he 
presses home upon the minds of men with calm 
intensity is the danger of losing it through sin 
and unbelief. The one thing that he tenderly 
and urgently pleads with them to do, is to make 
sure of its immortal blessedness through faith 
and love and obedience to him. And so, at 
every point, he passes by the non-essential to 
touch the essential, he disregards the passing 
curiosity to satisfy the real anxiety, he neglects 
the shadows to reveal the substance of the un- 
seen world. 

Teaching like this is the only kind of teach- 
ing that will always renew itself, always have 
something more to bestow upon us. It cannot 
grow obsolete. It cannot be drained of its sig- 
nificance. It is like life. Nay, it is life, and it 
gives life. 

IV 

Let us understand, then, that if our Chris- 
tianity is to satisfy our whole nature, if it is to 
have its real and full meaning, and power to 
bring in the kingdom of heaven, it must in- 
clude this element. We must be as loyal to 
the teaching of Jesus as we are to his example. 
We must count no pains too great to spend 

169 


THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY 


upon the study of that teaching as it lies in the 
records, and no effort too severe to make in 
order that it may be restored in its integrity 
and entirety, rounded and harmonized, within 
the very centre of our minds. And then we 
must preach it, simply, sincerely, certainly, as 
the only doctrine which can lead men out of 
the intellectual anarchy of doubt into the peace- 
ful realm of truth. 

This is what the age is looking and longing 
for. It can find no joy in the kingdom of heaven 
unless it finds there a source of authority for 
the mind as well as for the heart. Authority 
is what the sociologist demands, in order that 
he may have a sure basis for the precepts of 
altruism. Authority is what the philosopher 
seeks, in order that he may have a fixed point 
of departure and certain limits of speculation. 
Authority is what the poet craves, as he clings 
to 

“ The truths that never can he proved, 

Until we close with all we loved 
And all we flow from , soul in soul” 

Men are crying lo here ! and lo there ! We must 
find the source of authority in an inerrant Book, 
or in an enlightened reason, or in an infallible 
Church, or perhaps in all three; as if there could 
be three sources of one authority, or as if a chan- 
170 


THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY 


nel could ever be rightly called a source ! Let 
us not hesitate to pass through this confusion 
of tongues and of ideas, serene and untroubled, 
with the message of a more excellent way. 

Christ is the Light of all Scripture. Christ 
is the Master of holy reason. Christ is the sole 
Lord and Life of the true Church. By his word 
we test all doctrines, conclusions, and com- 
mands. On his word we build all faith. This 
is the source of authority in the kingdom of 
heaven. Let us neither forget nor hesitate to 
appeal to it always with untrembling certainty 
and positive conviction. If Christ did not know 
and preach the truth, then there is no truth 
that can be known or preached. Unless we are 
sure of this, we would better go out of business 
entirely. It is inconceivable that the loftiest 
character in history should be the most mis- 
taken man who ever thought about the real 
basis and meaning of life. It is incredible that 
the noblest life in the world should be founded 
upon a faith that was vain. It is impossible 
that a supreme devotion and a real likeness to 
Christ should have been produced and per- 
petuated in the world without a veritable ap- 
prehension of that which he knew and taught 
concerning God and man. 

To have this apprehension clearly formed 
171 


THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY 


within us must be our ardent and joyful intel- 
lectual endeavour. We are not to rest content 
with the study of single words and separate 
phrases. The limitations of language, the con- 
ditions of transmission, will always expose us 
to error if we follow that course. The truth 
as it is in Jesus does not lie in fragments, but 
in the rounded whole. We must get back to 
the unity and integrity of the thoughts of Jesus, 
the creed of Christ. The broad outline of his 
vision of things human and divine, the central 
verities which appear firm and unchangeable 
in all the reports of his teaching, the point of 
view from which he discerned and interpreted 
the mystery of life, — that is what we must seek. 
And when we find it, we must take our stand 
there as men who feel the solid ground beneath 
their feet. Illustrations and confirmations we 
may gather from science and history and phi- 
losophy. But the rock of certainty is the mind 
of Jesus, expressed in his living words and in 
his speaking life. Beyond this we need not and 
we cannot go. Here is the ultimatum. This 
is the truth, we say to men, because Jesus knew 
it, and said it, and lived it. 

But one thing we may not, we dare not, for- 
get. The condition of apprehending, and how 
much more of preaching, the truth revealed by 
172 


THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY 

Christ is that we abide in him. The word of 
Jesus in the mind of one who does not do the 
will of Jesus, lies like seed-corn in a mummy’s 
hand. It is only by dwelling with him and 
receiving his character, his personality, so pro- 
foundly, so vitally that it shall be with us as 
if, in his own words, we had partaken of his 
flesh and his blood, as if his sacred humanity 
had been interwoven with the very fibres of 
our heart and pulsed with secret power in all 
our veins, — it is thus only that we can be en- 
abled to see his teaching as it is, and set it forth 
with luminous conviction to the souls of men. 

And if ever we ourselves become afraid of 
our own task, and shrink from it; if the scepti- 
cism of our age appalls us and chills us to the 
marrow; if we question whether a gospel so 
simple, so absolute, as that which is committed 
to us can find acceptance in such a world, at 
such a time as this, — be sure it is because we 
have gotten out of fellowship with him who is 
our Peace and our Hope, our Light and our 
Strength. A Christless man can never preach 
Christ. We have been anxious and troubled 
about many things, and have forgotten the 
one thing needful. Peace we must have before 
we can have power. Let us straightway return, 
in prayer, in meditation, in trust, in faithful 
173 


THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY 


simple-hearted obedience, to him who is the 
only centre of Peace because he is the only 
source of authority. 

“/ have a life in Christ to live. 

But ere I live it must I wait 
Till learning can clear answer give 
Of this and that book's date ? 

I have a life in Christ to live, 

I have a death in Christ to die ; — - 
And must I wait till science give 
All doubts a full reply ? 

Nay , rather, while the sea of doubt 
Is raging wildly round about , 

Questioning of life and death and sin , 

Let me but creep within 

Thy fold, 0 Christ, and at Thy feet 

Take but the lowest seat. 

And hear Thine awful voice repeat 
In gentlest accents , heavenly sweet , 

Come unto Me and rest; 

Believe Me, and be blest'* 


174 


VI 

LIBERTY 

^pHERE are three points at which the teach- 
ing of Jesus comes into closest contact with 
the needs of the present age. Three problems 
of profound difficulty are pressing to-day upon 
all thoughtful men: the psychological problem 
of the freedom of the will; the theological prob- 
lem of the actual relation of God to the universe; 
and the moral problem of man’s duty to his 
fellow-men in a world of inequality. Most of 
the intellectual perplexities and practical perils 
of our times come directly from these questions, 
to which modern scepticism gives an answer 
of despair, or at best only a dubious and un- 
certain reply. 

But the gospel of Christ, rightly apprehended 
and interpreted, offers us a solution of these 
problems which is full of light and hope. Three 
truths emerge in his doctrine, and stand out 
clear and sharp as mountain peaks against the 
blue: the truth of human liberty, the truth of 
Divine sovereignty, and the truth of universal 
service. Of these three truths we must never 
175 


LIBERTY 


lose sight, if our thinking is to be in accordance 
with the mind of Jesus. To these three truths 
we must bear witness, unhesitatingly, faith- 
fully, and joyfully, if our preaching is to be a 
gospel for this age of doubt. 

I 

No one who has looked steadily upon the 
face of modern life as it is reflected in popular 
literature can deny that it is “sicklied o’er” 
with the shadow of fatalism. It is evident in 
the writings of the learned and in the scrib- 
blings of the ignorant. Everywhere there is a 
tendency to explain the whole life of man as 
the product of heredity and environment. The 
student of physiology, tracing the subtle corre- 
spondence between the processes of conscious- 
ness and the changes and movements of the 
nervous system, makes the enormous as- 
sumption that the correspondence amounts to 
identity. He takes for granted that the hopes, 
affections, and aspirations, which glorify this 
mortal life, are in their last analysis the result 
of certain puckerings of the gray matter of the 
nerves. The actions which flow from them are 
as necessary as the fall of an apple when the stem 
is broken. The caress which a mother gives to 
her child, and the blow with which a murderer 
176 


LIBERTY 


strikes his victim dead, are equally automatic 
and inevitable. They are the motions of deli- 
cately constructed puppets, and the triumph 
of modern investigation is the discovery of the 
string which moves them and the forces which 
pull it. 

It is true that many of the teachers who steer 
us, more or less openly, towards this conclusion 
are careful to disavow the idea that they are 
teaching materialism. The name is highly un- 
popular at present, and there is hardly one of 
the men of science of to-day who has not pro- 
tested with indignation that no one should 
dare to call him a materialist. They have de- 
vised subtle theories of something called “ mind- 
stuff” which they hold, with W. K. Clifford, 
“is the reality which we perceive as matter.” 
They distinguish, with Huxley, between matter 
and force, and a third thing which they call 
consciousness and which they admit cannot 
conceivably be a modification of either of the 
first two things; but they go on to say that 
“what we call the operations of the mind are 
functions of the brain, and the materials of 
consciousness are products of cerebral activity.” 
In short, they give a materialistic explanation 
of the origin and processes of thought, and then 
protect themselves against the imputation of 
177 


LIBERTY 


being materialists, by solemnly averring that 
they have not the slightest idea of what matter 
really is, nor the slightest intention of suggest- 
ing that it has any resemblance to the so-called 
mental operations which are probably produced 
by one of its own forms of activity. 

A scheme like this certainly has no room for 
free-will or personal responsibility. It makes 
a man’s character and action entirely dependent 
upon the amount and quality of nervous energy 
that has been transmitted to him by his ances- 
tors and developed by the circumstances of his 
life. He lives, as Tyndall says, in a realm of 
“physical and moral necessity,” — though why 
he should be at pains to say “moral,” I can 
hardly conceive. One adjective would serve as 
well as two, when they both mean the same 
thing. It requires but a little exercise of this 
nervous energy on our part, in the form of imag- 
ination, to trace it back to its previous form of 
heat stored up in certain hundredweights of 
food and appropriated by digestion. From this 
point our cerebral activity skips lightly and 
altogether without volition along the various 
lines of animal and vegetable life, of chemical 
and physical transformations of energy, until 
we arrive at the idea of the sun. From this idea 
a certain uncontrollable change in the gray 
178 


LIBERTY 


substance of our brain produces the further no- 
tion that the arrangement of certain quantities 
of matter and force which took place in some 
inexplicable way long before the birth of the 
solar system was really the thing that settled 
the question whether you and I should prefer 
telling the truth to lying, — if we do. Indeed, 
there never has been any question at all about 
it; it was fixed from the beginning. We have 
no more responsibility for it than we have for 
the colour of our eyes or the shape of our noses. 

I have found a brief and explicit statement 
of the position to which this method of think- 
ing forces those who follow it, in an article iron- 
ically entitled “Thoughts of a Human Autom- 
aton” in a recent English periodical. 

“I am an automaton — a puppet dangling on 
my distinctive wire, which Fate holds with an 
unrelaxing grip. I am not different, nor do I 
feel differently, from my fellow-men, but my 
eyes refuse to blink away the truth, which is, 
that I am an automatic machine, a piece of 
clockwork wound up to go for an allotted time, 
smoothly or otherwise, as the efficiency of the 
machinery may determine. Free-will is a myth 
invented by man to satisfy his emotions, not 
his reason. I feel as if I were free, as if I were 
responsible for my thoughts and actions, just 
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LIBERTY 


as a person under the influence of hypnotism 
believes he is free to do as he pleases. But he 
is not; nor am I. If it were once possible for 
a rational being to question this fact, the dis- 
coveries of Darwin must have set his doubts at 
rest. . . . 

“ What is crime ? A crime is an action threat- 
ened by the law with punishment, says Kant; 
and freedom of action or free-will is a legally 
necessary condition of crime. But the law of 
heredity conclusively demonstrates that free- 
will and freedom of action stand in the category 
of lively imaginings. Therefore crime, as the 
law understands it, is non-existent, since no 
imputability can be recognized when a man 
is not responsible for his actions. Therefore 
the law is not justified in inflicting punish- 
ment. . . . 

“Briefly to conclude. Religion can no more 
mix with science than oil with water. Science 
acknowledges no necessity for the existence of 
religion, and finally severs the bonds between 
morality and religion. Morality, altogether 
independent of religion, is entirely based upon 
self-interest. The supposed connection between 
religion and morality is an illusion most per- 
nicious to the general welfare and advance of 
mankind. Religion, as a superfluity, should 
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LIBERTY 


be excluded from all educational institutions. 
Its place will be supplied by the creed of scien- 
tific philosophy — Determinism. The primary 
principle of Determinism, namely, that a human 
being is an automaton, and therefore not re- 
sponsible for his thoughts or his acts, taken 
together with its corollaries, more than suffices 
for every intellectual need hitherto provided for 
by religion. For the two great factors in the 
value of religion are its ethics and its sedative 
properties, and in both these uses Determinism 
displays overwhelming intellectual superiority. 
Its ethics are more universal and its consolation 
more assured; for they both rest on irrefragable 
scientific truth. The Determinist is conse- 
quently never harassed by doubts — the Rock 
of Ages is fragile compared with the adamantine 
foundation of his creed.” 

This curious claim of an automaton to have 
a “ creed” would be humorous, if it were not so 
sad and so dangerous. For though, as a matter 
of fact, there are few men who will make, even 
under an assumed name, such a candid con- 
fession of faith in their own moral non-entity 
as that which we have just read, there are many 
men who are, consciously or unconsciously, 
preaching the same black creed of Necessity 
in the subtle forms of literary art, and multi- 
181 


LIBERTY 


tudes who are silently accepting it as gospel 
truth. Fatalism broods over modern fiction 
and the modern drama like a huge, shapeless 
spectre; and its influence is felt in all the judg- 
ments and conceptions and unspoken but clearly 
revealed sentiments of a society which finds its 
chief intellectual pabulum in novels and plays. 

Here is the famous French realist, Zola, of 
whose books it is said that enough have been 
sold to build a pile as high as the Eiffel tower. 
He writes a novel called La Bete Humaine, in 
which he shows how unswervingly the lines of 
evil run through the plan of life. He describes 
seven inevitable murders, occurring within eigh- 
teen months in close connection with a certain 
fated house, and closes his book with the de- 
scription of a railway train, crowded with sol- 
diers, dragged by an engine whose driver has 
been killed, dashing at headlong speed into the 
midnight. The train is the world; we are the 
freight; fate is the track; death is the dark- 
ness; God is the engineer, — who is dead. 

Here is the leader of the Dutch sensitivists, 
Louis Couperus, who writes a romance called 
Noodlot , “ Destiny ” in which four human lives 
are tangled together in an inextricable and hor- 
rible coil. One of his characters pauses for an 
instant in the shameful career to which he is 
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LIBERTY 


impelled. “He threw himself back in his chair, 
still feebly wringing his hands, and the tears 
trickled again and again down his cheeks. He 
saw his own cowardice take shape before him. 
He stared into its frightened eyes, and he did 
not condemn it. For he was as fate had made 
him. He was a craven, and he could not help 
it. Men called such an one as he a coward; it 
was but a word. Why coward, or simple and 
brave, or good and noble ? It was all a matter 
of convention, of accepted meaning; the whole 
world was mere convention, a concept, an illu- 
sion of the brain. There was nothing real at 
all — nothing !’ 5 

Here is the Norse dramatist, Ibsen. He 
writes a drama of life which he calls Ghosts , 
and shows how every player is haunted by dead 
ancestors who look through his eyes, speak in 
his words, and act in his deeds. Echoes of spent 
passion, shreds and patches of worn-out sin, 
rags and tatters of the past, — that is the stuff 
of which life is fabricated, like a piece of shoddy 
cloth, in the great mill of circumstance which 
stands on the banks of the river of time and 
turns out the shabby lives of men and women. 

Nor is this view of life confined to the great 
foreign masters of realism. It pervades almost 
all the minor schools of fiction; it diffuses itself 
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LIBERTY 


insensibly through the work of the feeble and 
fatuous imitators. A keen and wholesome 
critic of our own literature, Mr. Charles Dud- 
ley Warner, put his finger upon the fact when 
he wrote: “It has come about that the novels 
and stories which are to fill our leisure hours 
and cheer us in this vale of tears have become 
what we call tragic. It is not easy to define 
what tragedy is, but the term is applied in mod- 
ern fiction to scenes and characters that come 
to ruin from no particular fault of their own, — 
not even when the characters break most of 
the ten commandments, — but by an unap- 
peasable fate that dogs and thwarts them. This 
is the romance of fatality, and if it is tragedy, 
it is the tragedy of fatalism.” 

It is not possible that such a theory of exist- 
ence should prevail without bringing sadness 
and heaviness into the hearts of men. The 
modern melancholy of which we spoke in the 
first lecture is largely the result of this general 
sense of a godless predestination. It is Calvin- 
ism with the bottom knocked out. It robs life 
of all interest, of all joy, of all enthusiasm. Pes- 
simism exudes from fatalism like sepia from 
the cuttlefish. What could be more dispiriting 
than to doubt the reality of all effort, to deny 
the possibility of self-conquest and triumph 
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over circumstances, to find heroism an illusion 
and virtue a dream? What could break the 
spring of life more completely than to feel that 
our feet are tangled in a net whose meshes were 
woven for us by our ancestors, and for them 
by tailless apes, and for them by gilled amphib- 
ians, and for them by gliding worms, and for 
them by ciliated larvae, and for them by 
amoebae, and for them by God does not know 
what? To baptize fatalism with a Christian 
name does not change its nature. To hold fast 
to the metaphysical conception of God while 
accepting Heredity and Environment as his 
only and infallible prophets is simply to add a 
new ethical horror to the dismal delusion of 
life, and to fall back into the pessimism of Omar 
Khayyam. 

“We are no other than a moving row 
Of Magic Shadow-shapes , that come and go 
Round with this Sun-illumined Lantern , held 
In Midnight by the Master of the Show ; 

Impotent Pieces of the Game He plays 
Upon this Checker-board of Nights and Days ; 

Hither and thither moves , and checks , and slays , 

And one by one back in the Closet lays. 

The Moving Finger writes ; and , having writ , 

Moves on; nor all your Piety nor wit 

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Shall lure it hack to cancel half a Line , 

Nor all your tears wash out a Word of it. 

And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky , 

Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die, 

Lift not your hands to It for help— for it 
As impotently rolls as you or I." 

II 

This is the solution which modern positivism, 
christened or unchristened, offers for the prob- 
lem of the freedom of the will. Before we turn 
to consider the very different answer which 
Christ gives to the same question, let us stay 
for a moment to ask whether this current and 
popular solution is of the nature of a demon- 
stration, or of the nature of a doubt. Is it so 
clearly proven that science forces us to accept 
determinism? Or is it an un verifiable assump- 
tion, which is made under the influence of a 
general scepticism in regard to spiritual reali- 
ties, and which leaves out of view quite as many 
and quite as important facts as those which it 
professes to explain? Are we compelled to ad- 
mit it; or is it only one of two alternatives, 
neither of which is scientifically demonstrable, 
so that the choice between them must rest upon 
other considerations ? 

I do not hesitate to say that the whole weight 
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of sober and sane criticism inclines to the latter 
conclusion. Determinism has not yet been 
established either by physiological, psycholog- 
ical, or metaphysical argument. 

The common assumption that the abstract 
reasoning of Jonathan Edwards against the 
liberty of the will has never been and cannot 
be refuted, is based upon ignorance of the facts. 
An American philosopher, Mr. Rowland Haz- 
ard, has answered it with great clearness and 
force. Professor George P. Fisher says: “The 
fundamental point of Mr. Hazard’s criticism 
of Edwards is fully established. It must be 
allowed that his confutation of that conception 
of the will which underlies the reasoning of the 
great theologian is sound and conclusive.” 

The support which modern science is sup- 
posed to give to the theory of determinism 
turns out, upon closer examination, to be alto- 
gether illusory. The soundest and most care- 
ful investigators utterly decline to commit 
themselves to that metaphysical dogma, or 
to bind science as a maid-of-all-work in the 
service of fatalistic theology. 

Lord Kelvin recently said: “The influence 
of animal or vegetable life on matter is infinitely 
beyond the range of any scientific inquiry 
hitherto entered on. Its power of directing; 
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the motions of moving particles, in the demon- 
strated daily miracle of our human free-will, and 
in the growth of generation after generation of 
plants from a single seed, are infinitely differ- 
ent from any possible result of the fortuitous 
concourse of atoms. The real phenomena of 
life infinitely transcend human science.” 

The theory that consciousness is a function 
of the brain breaks down completely when it 
attempts to explain the phenomena of sleep. 
Why should all the other functions of the body 
be carried on without fatigue and without in- 
terruption while consciousness alone demands 
rest and admits of intervals of cessation ? If it 
is a function of nerve-matter, sleep abolishes 
it. How does it come back again without 
losing the sense of personal identity? Is it 
conceivable that the highest character, the 
loftiest genius, is purely an intermittent secre- 
tion of certain nerve-cells, and that during the 
hours of sleep, embracing one-third of its entire 
history, it is absolutely non-existent? “ Func- 
tion,” says an eminent neurologist, “is a physi- 
ological term, and it is, I submit, improper to 
speak of states of consciousness as being func- 
tions of the brain. ... It is not the mind, 
but the physical basis of mind, which is a prod- 
uct of physical evolution. It is the organ of 
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mind, not the mind of itself, which being an 
evolution out of the rest of the body is repre- 
sentative of it.” 

The fact that the brain is a double organ, — 
that there are really two brains, only one of 
which is used, — cannot be explained on the 
theory that consciousness is merely the result 
of the vibration of nerve filaments, as the music 
of the iEolian harp is the result of the passage 
of the wind over its strings. A distinguished 
physiologist has cleverly shown that if this 
were the case a double brain would mean a 
double amount of thought, just as twice the 
number of strings would mean twice the quan- 
tity of music. But the fact that this is not so, 
points clearly to the hypothesis that the brain 
is not an iEolian harp helplessly vibrating under 
external impulses, but a double organ with 
two sets of keys, and the mind is like the player 
who can use either one of them to make the 
music. And this corresponds closely with our 
own sense of the process. For we are conscious 
not only of passive thoughts and feelings, 
evoked within us by external causes, but also 
of thoughts and feelings voluntarily directed 
and combined, woven together in creative har- 
monies, and moving under the guidance of 
chosen ideals towards a symphonic complete- 
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ness. Even the sense of discord and conflict 
which often rises within us is an evidence that 
there is a player as well as an instrument. For 
it is inconceivable that an ^Eolian harp, ill- 
strung, should dislike its own bad music, and 
endeavour, or think that it could endeavour, to 
make a better, sweeter sound. 

Heredity is undoubtedly a real and power- 
ful force. It supplies the outfit of life. But 
does it determine the use which we shall make 
of it? The very extension of the doctrine by 
the investigations of science dissolves this nar- 
row and absolute conclusion. We inherit from 
thousands, from hundreds of thousands, of 
ancestors. The blood of many families and 
tribes and races is mingled in our veins. What 
is it that decides which of these many lines we 
shall follow? It must be either blind chance 
or free choice. All the phenomena of society, 
all the facts of consciousness, are in favour of 
the latter supposition. We see men whose 
heritage is of the lowest and the worst, working 
their way up, by sheer strength of moral choice 
and effort, to a higher plane. We see men whose 
heritage is of the loftiest and the best, declining 

“thro’ acted crime , 

Or seeming-genial venial faulty 
Recurring and suggesting still,” 

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to the very depths of infamy. It is true that 
a man cannot bring out of himself anything 
that is not already there. But it is true also, 
by virtue of heredity, that there are many po- 
tential men in every man, and which of them 
is to emerge, he chooses for himself by a thou- 
sand silent moral preferences; by yielding or 
by resisting; by the cowardice and corruption, 
or by the courage and purification of his own 
free-will. 

Even those who write of human life from a 
professedly naturalistic standpoint cannot get 
rid of this conviction. Take Zola, for example. 
If he were consistent, he would speak with equal 
and impassive coldness of all his characters, 
tangled together in the inextricable toils of 
heredity. But he cannot help letting his hatred 
and contempt for the selfish, the luxurious, the 
vicious, express itself in the very accent with 
which he describes them. He cannot help show- 
ing his admiration and affection for those who, 
like Denise and Doctor Pascal , and Clotilde , rise 
out of the infamy which envelops the family 
Rougon-Macquart . Virtue and vice may be 
scientifically treated as if they were merely 
natural products like sugar and vitriol; but 
when we come to talk of them from a human 
standpoint, there is something within us which 
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demands that we shall recognize a merit in being 
virtuous, and a shame in being vicious, — quali- 
ties which can never belong to mere secretions, 
whether of plants or of nerves, — qualities which 
have no possible meaning unless there is a free 
will in man, capable of choosing between the 
evil and the good. 

That a free will is possible, modern psy- 
chology assures us, as the result of its latest 
researches. It does not attempt to demonstrate 
the existence of such a power by physiological 
investigation. It confesses that this demonstra- 
tion is impossible with our present knowledge. 
But it declares with equal candour that the 
contrary attempt to show that the sense of 
freedom is a delusion, is inconclusive. “The 
last word of psychology here,” says Professor 
William James, “is ignorance, for the forces 
engaged are too delicate and numerous to be 
followed in detail.” He points out the ex- 
tremely reckless and inconsequent nature of 
the reasoning by which the determinists seek 
to make mere analogies drawn from the course 
of rivers, and reflex actions, and other material 
phenomena, serve as proofs that the will is a 
mechanical effect. He exposes the bold as- 
sumption by which they ignore the testimony 
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of consciousness in the presence of feeling and 
effort. He shows that the utmost which any 
argument for determinism can do is to present 
a possible hypothesis, which a man who has 
already determined to hold fast to the idea 
that the whole universe is one chain of inevi- 
table causation may accept if he likes. But 
meanwhile the other alternative stands equally 
open. The moral arguments all point in that 
direction. The only course, in such a situa- 
tion, is voluntary choice. “For scepticism it- 
self, if systematic, is also voluntary choice. If, 
meanwhile, the will be indetermined, it would 
seem only fitting that the belief in its indeter- 
mination should be voluntarily chosen from 
amongst other possible beliefs. Freedom’s first 
deed should be to affirm itself. . . . Thus not 
only our morality but our religion, so far as 
the latter is deliberate, depends on the effort 
which we can make. ‘ Will you or wont you 
have it so ? 9 is the most probing question we 
are ever asked: we are asked it every hour of 
the day, and about the largest as well as the 
smallest, the most theoretical as well as the 
most practical, things. We answer by consents or 
non-consents , and not by words. What wonder 
if these dumb responses should seem our deepest 
organs of communication with the nature of 
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things ! What wonder if the effort demanded by 
them should be the measure of our worth as men ! 
What wonder if the amount which we accord 
of it be the one strictly underived and original 
contribution which we make to the world !” 

Ill 

Here, then, modern science, careful, exact, 
reverent, as distinguished from modern scepti- 
cism, leaves us before the two doors. And here 
Christ comes to us, calling us to enter through 
the door of liberty into the pathway of eternal 
life. “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek 
and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened 
unto you .” 1 “If any man willeth to do his 
will, he shall know of the teaching .” 2 

The whole life and ministry of Jesus is a reve- 
lation of moral freedom. His entrance into the 
world was voluntary. His continuance in hu- 
man life was voluntary. His death was volun- 
tary. At the first crisis of his life he chose to 
go about his Father’s business. In the temp- 
tation he chose to resist the allurements of the 
Evil One. On the way to the cross he chose 
not to call on God for the deliverance which he 
knew would come in answer to his call. He 
was, indeed, fulfilling an appointed task, tread- 

1 St. Matt. 7:7. 2 St. John 7 : 17. 


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ing the path which had been marked out for 
the feet of the Christ; but he was fulfilling the 
task freely; he was walking in liberty because 
he loved to do the will of God. The triumph 
of his virtue lay in the freedom of his choice. 

There was a singular propriety in the text of 
his first public discourse. It was a declaration 
of liberty, as well as of grace. It was an eman- 
cipation proclamation as well as a gospel of 
comfort and help. “The spirit of the Lord is 
upon me, because he anointed me to preach 
good tidings to the poor; he hath sent me to 
proclaim release to the captives, and recover- 
ing of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them 
that are crushed, to proclaim the acceptable 
year of the Lord .” 1 And what was the op- 
pressive bondage from which he proclaimed 
release ? Was it not the tyranny of a false doc- 
trine of necessity over the minds of men, as 
well as the enslaving influence of sin over their 
inert and hopeless wills? 

Here were the scribes and Pharisees teach- 
ing that the whole world was divided into two 
classes, — the chosen and the not-chosen, the 
righteous for whom salvation was secure what- 
ever they might do, and the sinners for whom 
salvation was impossible whatever they might 

1 St. Luke 4 : 18. 

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do. Here were the outcast, the lost, the neg- 
lected, shut out, by no choice of their own, but 
by their birth, by the occupations in which 
they were engaged, by their ignorance, by the 
very conditions of their life, from all part in 
the kingdom of heaven as the scribes and Phari- 
sees conceived it; not only the harlots and the 
publicans, but also Am Haarez , “the people of 
the land,” with whom it was not fitting that a 
righteous person should have any dealings; 
miserable souls, bound by inheritance to a des- 
perate and unhallowed fate. Here came Jesus, 
taking his way directly to these lost ones, these 
outsiders, and telling them that all this doc- 
trine of inevitable doom was a chain of lies, 
breaking the imaginary fetters from their souls 
and assuring them by his first word that they 
were free, even though they were ignorant of 
it. “Repent,” he cried, “for the kingdom of 
heaven has approached unto you .” 1 “Except 
ye be converted and become as little children, 
ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven .” 2 
And what is the significance of these words, 
“repentance” and “conversion,” — their real 
significance, I mean, not that which has been 
read into them by centuries of false and formal 
theology? They are not passive and involun- 

1 St. Matt. 4 : 17. 


196 


2 St. Matt. 18 : 3. 


LIBERTY 


tary words; they do not rest upon the idea of 
qualifications which may or may not be in the 
possession of those to whom Christ speaks. 
They are active words, — words of inward move- 
ment and exertion. “Repent” means change 
your mind; make that simple effort of the soul 
for internal change which is the ultimate act 
of the free will; put forth that power of fixed 
attention to the new motive which is the cen- 
tral essence of liberty and the creative force 
of the soul. “Be converted,” as Christ spoke 
the word, is not passive; it expresses an action 
exercised by the soul within itself; it means 
simply “turn around”; set yourself in a new 
relation to God, to truth, to virtue. The name 
of this relation is faith. “Believe” is Christ’s 
great word. It is the “ open sesame ” of the 
kingdom. “Believe in God, believe also in 
me .” 1 “He that believeth hath everlasting 
life .” 2 “All things are possible to him that 
believeth .” 3 But it is never spoken of as a 
mere intellectual opinion, or emotional experi- 
ence, an irresistible conviction wrought by ex- 
ternal evidence in the mind, or bestowed with- 
out effort upon the soul. The Bible never says 
that faith is a gift. There is a voluntary ele- 
ment in it. It is something to be done by the 

1 St. John 14:1. 2 St. John 6 : 47. 3 St. Mark 9 : 23. 

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exercise of an inward power. It is a coming 
of the soul to Christ; it is a following of the 
soul after him; it is the first step in a long course 
of spiritual activity. It is a deed. The dis- 
ciples said unto Christ, “What must we do 
that we may work the works of God?” Jesus 
answered, “This is the work of God, that ye 
believe on him whom he hath sent.” 1 

Now there is not a hint in all the teaching 
of Jesus that this first act of freedom is impos- 
sible for any soul to whom he speaks. He has 
no idea of an eternal predestination binding 
some to belief and others to unbelief, a secret 
decree including certain men in the kingdom 
and excluding others from all possibility of 
entering into it. It is true that he says, “No 
man can come unto Me except the Father draw 
him ”; 2 but what he means by this drawing 
he tells us in the parable of the Lost Son, where 
it is the simple knowledge of the Father’s abun- 
dant love that draws the prodigal back from 
the far country of sin ; 3 and in the parable of 
the Publican in the Temple , 4 where it is the 
sense of the Divine mercy and forgiveness that 
makes the outcast man cry, “God, be merciful 
to me a sinner.” There is prevenient grace in 


1 St. John 6 : 28, 29. 

3 St. Luke 15. 


198 


2 St. John 6 : 44. 

4 St. Luke 18 : 10-14. 


LIBERTY 


the doctrine of Jesus. But the grace is there. 
It has already come. All that man has to do 
is to meet it, to put himself into the upward 
swing of it, that it may lift and help him heaven- 
ward. 

A calling and a choosing by God are neces- 
sary before any man can be saved. But Jesus 
does not speak of this choosing and calling as 
eternal. Christ himself is the call, and all who 
answer it are chosen. “If any man thirst, let 
him come unto me and drink .” 1 “Him that 
cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out .” 2 
The heavenly invitation is set forth in all its 
generosity and sincerity in the story of the 
Marriage Feast . 3 The bidding went out into 
the highways and hedges, to the bad and to 
the good; and all who heard and accepted it 
were welcome. And if a single guest was turned 
away, it was only because his own conduct 
showed that he had not really taken the invi- 
tation honestly and accepted willingly all that 
was provided for him. 

There is not a single word in all that Jesus 
said to suggest any other reason than this for 
the exclusion of a single person from the bless- 
ings of the kingdom. “Ye will not come unto 

1 St. John 7 : 37. 2 St. John 6 : 37. 

s St. Matt. 22 : 1-14. 

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LIBERTY 


me that ye might have life .” 1 “How often 
would I have gathered thy children together 
even as a hen gathereth her chickens under 
her wings, and ye would not ” 2 There is not 
one statement that anything else but mercy 
and grace has been eternally prepared by God 
for any human soul. In that awful parable of 
judgment which discloses the convincing picture 
of the final separation of the evil from the good, 
Christ says distinctly that the joy of the blessed 
has been prepared for them from the founda- 
tion of the world, but of the punishment of the 
cursed, he says with equal distinctness that it 
was not prepared for them, but for the devil 
and his angels . 3 No one is ever lost because 
he cannot do good, but only because he will 
not do what he can. 

Christ recognizes the undoubted truth which 
lies in the doctrine of heredity; but he exposes, 
and almost ridicules, the false and fatal ex- 
tremes to which men think it out. To the Jews, 
who claimed that because they were Abraham’s 
seed they must be free, he showed that they 
were in bondage to their own sins. They had 
chosen to break away from the heredity of faith 
and righteousness, and were no longer the true 

1 St.' John 5 : 40. 2 gt. Matt. 23 . 37> 

3 St. Matt. 25 : 34Hrl. 

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children of Abraham. They had become the 
children of the devil, because they had “ willed 
to do his works.” 1 He said to his disciples who 
took up the cant of the day about hereditary 
sin and punishment, asked whether the blind 
man or his parents had sinned that he was born 
blind, “ Neither hath this man sinned, nor his 
parents, but that the works of God should be 
made manifest in him.” 2 The true inheritance, 
the deepest inheritance which Jesus recognizes 
in the human race, is an inheritance from God; 
a nature made in the Divine image, spiritual, 
free, responsible, and capable, though so sadly 
marred, though so far astray, of returning to 
communion with the Heavenly Father. 

Undoubtedly Christ perceived and taught 
the immense difficulty of being good; the in- 
firmity which long centuries of sin has wrought 
into the very fibres of the soul; the awful and 
almost inaccessible height of true holiness; the 
enormous obstacles which lie in the way of at- 
taining it. The gate is strait, and we must 
agonize to enter in by it. The road is steep, 
and we must toil to climb it. “How hardly 
shall they that have riches enter into the king- 
dom of God .” 3 And yet “the kingdom of 
heaven suffereth violence, and men of violence 

1 St. John 8 : 33-47. 2 St. John 9:3. 8 St. Mark 10 : 23. 

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take it by force.” 1 There is an effort which 
succeeds even in this greatest of all endeavours, 
not in its own strength, but because it is sure 
of a Divine assistance. “With man it is im- 
possible, but not with God.” 2 To the human 
will, enfeebled and corrupted, so that it is like 
a sick man, barely able to turn himself upon 
his couch, and look and long and cry for help, 
three great sources of strength are always open 
and accessible. 

The first is prayer. “Men ought always to 
pray, and not to faint.” 3 How sweet and serene 
is the voice that rings through the vain dis- 
putations and doubtful wranglings of the scribes 
and Pharisees, and calls every sinful soul to 
pray! Pray! you may not be able to realize 
your own ideal, but you can ask God to help 
you hold fast to it and struggle towards it. 
Pray ! 

“More things are wrought hy prayer 
Than this world dreams of." 

Pray! For God is not deaf, nor sleeping, nor 
gone upon a journey; he has not bound you 
to an inexorable fate and bound himself not to 
interfere with it. Pray ! The liberty of your 
own soul, and the liberty of God himself, dwells 

1 St. Matt. 11 : 12. 2 St. Mark 10 : 27. 

202 


3 St. Luke 18 : 1. 


LIBERTY 


in that word; for when you stretch your feeble 
hand to him, a Divine hand will meet it, and 
break your fetters, and lift you out of darkness 
and death into life and light. 

The second source of strength is the Holy 
Spirit. It is inconceivable, morally impossible, 
that there should be such a Spirit, and yet that 
his influence should be withheld from those 
who need and implore it. “If ye then, being 
evil, know how to give good gifts unto your 
children, how much more shall your heavenly 
Father give the Holy Spirit unto them that 
ask him.” 1 

The third source of strength is Christ him- 
self. Does the sense of past guilt stand in the 
way of future effort? He says, “I have power 
on earth to forgive sins.” 2 Does the soul feel 
dead and hopeless under the burden of evil 
habits? He says, “I came that they may have 
life, and may have it abundantly.” 3 Do the 
works of a true and vital righteousness seem 
far beyond our power? He says, “Without me 
ye can do nothing ”; 4 but, “Lo, I am with you 
alway, even unto the end of the world.” 5 “He 
that believeth on me, the works that I do shall 
he do also, and greater works than these shall 

i St. Luke 11 : 13. 2 St. Mark 2:10. * St. John 10 : 10. 

4 St. John 15 :5. 6 St. Matt. 28 : 20. 

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he do, because I go unto the Father.” 1 The 
whole life of Christ is summed up in the words, 
“But as many as received him, to them gave 
he power to become the sons of God.” 2 

But this receiving, we need to remember and 
assert again and again, is not a passive thing. 
It is an action of the soul, the opening of a door 
within the heart, the welcoming of a heavenly 
master. God does not save men as a watch- 
maker who repairs and sets a watch, but as a 
King who recalls his servants to their duty, as 
a Father who makes new revelations of his love 
to draw his lost children back to himself. The 
dogmas of the schools in regard to the working 
out of what they call the scheme of redemption 
sound like the creak and rattle of some vast 
machine. The doctrine of Christ is like the 
soft breath of spring, evoking the songs of birds 
and the unfolding of new life. No fiery chariot 
of grace swoops down to snatch men to glory. 
But a living Messenger comes forth from God 
to ask men to turn and walk back with him to 
their soul’s home. The invitation itself is a 
guarantee of the power to accept it. With au- 
thority Christ commanded the winds and the 
sea and they obeyed him. But with gracious 
pleading he invited the hearts of men, and those 

1 St. John 14 : 12. 


204 


2 St. John 1 : 12. 


LIBERTY 

who were willing gladly heard and followed 
him. 

“ If any man wills to come after Me,” 1 — that 
is the prelude of his message. He offers a leader- 
ship to men who can follow, a mastership to 
men who can obey. Out of this first movement 
he promises to guide and direct the whole de- 
velopment of the new life, — not a passive life 
of retirement, of ascetic meditation, of reflec- 
tion upon secret truth, — but an active life of 
service, of warfare against evil in the world, a 
life which translates truth into conduct. 

Contrast the religion of Jesus in this respect 
with the Oriental religions, and with those forms 
of Christianity which have borrowed the gar- 
ments of Buddha or speak with the accent 
of Mahomet. They despise and slight person- 
ality. Christ respects and emphasises it. They 
aim to reduce and evaporate responsibility. 
Christ aims to deepen and increase it. They 
point forward to a blank Nirvana in which the 
individual is lost and absorbed, or a Paradise 
in which he is forever lapped in sensual ease 
and pleasure. Christ speaks of the perfecting 
of the individual through the Divine communion 
and service on earth, and his entrance in heaven 
upon a new stage of the same communion, the 

1 St. Matt. 16 : 24. 

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same service, — “not in a blessed idleness, but 
in an exalted kingly work and activity.” And 
the entrance into this kingdom on earth, the con- 
tinuance in its realm of liberty, the attainment 
of its final glory, are all through an act of the 
will. The freedom which originated in God is 
only to be preserved by returning to God and 
abiding in him. 

“Owr wills are ours , we know not how ; 

Our unlls are ours , to make them Thine” 

That is the teaching of Jesus. That is the truth 
which, when it comes to men, makes them and 
keeps them free. 

IV 

It is impossible that we should be faithful 
preachers of Christ to the present age, unless 
we preach this truth. There may have been 
ages in which it was important to dwell upon 
other sides and aspects of the manifold reality 
of the spiritual world. But to-day this is the 
important side; this is the aspect which de- 
mands a clear recognition and an unfaltering 
proclamation by those who mean to be true to 
Christ and loyal to the needs of humanity. I 
do not believe that there is a single passage in 
the Old Testament which contradicts Christ’s 
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LIBERTY 


doctrine of the real liberty of the soul. But 
if there were such a passage, I would leave it 
forever alone, as belonging to that knowledge 
which was in part, and which was done away 
when that which was perfect had come. I do 
not believe that there is a single word in the 
writings of St. Paul which stands against this 
doctrine of the real liberty of the soul. I cut 
loose from the false interpretations which men 
have read into his words. I take the light of 
Christ’s teaching in my hand, and I go back 
to interpret by that light the teachings of the 
great Epistle to the Romans with its glorious 
revelation of “the mystery which hath been 
kept in silence through times eternal, but now 
is manifested, and by the Scriptures of the 
prophets, according to the commandment of 
the eternal God, is made known unto all the 
nations unto obedience of faith' 9 1 I hear again 
the cry of the struggling, labouring, conquering 
apostle: “To will is present with me , but to do 
that which is good is not. ... O wretched 
man that I am, who shall deliver me out of 
the body of this death? I thank God through 
Christ Jesus our Lord" ; 2 and I know that St. 
Paul also was a believer in the freedom of the 
will, and that he received this gospel and the 

2 Rom. 7 : 18, 24, 25. 


1 Rom. 16 : 26. 


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LIBERTY 


power to fulfil it, through the proclamation of 
liberty in Jesus Christ. 

“This matter of free-will,” wrote one of the 
most orthodox of theologians, but a few years 
before his death, “underlies everything. If 
you bring it to question, it is infinitely more 
than Calvinism. ... I believe in Calvinism, 
and I say that free-will stands before Calvin- 
ism. Everything is gone if free-will is gone; 
the moral system is gone, if free-will is gone; 
you cannot escape except by Materialism on 
the one hand or by Pantheism on the other. 
Hold hard therefore to the doctrine of free- 
will.” 

Yes, and we may say more than this. Not 
only is the moral system gone, but the great 
attraction of Christ is gone, the power of his 
gospel to liberate men is gone, if free-will is 
gone. 

The age has hypnotized itself. It is drifting 
steadily towards fatalism. It denies freedom, 
and therefore it is not free. It is in bondage 
to its own doubt. It is enslaved by its own 
denial. If there is such a thing as liberty, it 
can only be developed, as everything else has 
been developed, by action, by exercise. Life is 
self-change to meet environment. Liberty is 
self-exertion to unfold the soul. The law of 
208 


LIBERTY 


natural selection is that those who use a faculty 
shall expand it, but those who use it not shall 
lose it. Religion is life, and it must grow under 
the laws of life. Faith is simply the assertion 
of spiritual freedom; it is the first adventure 
of the soul. Make that adventure towards 
God, make that adventure towards Christ, 
and the soul will know that it is alive. So it 
enters upon that upward course which leads 
through the liberty of the sons of God to the 
height of heaven, 

“Where love is an unerring light 
And joy its own security ” 

This is the truth with which we are to go 
out a-gospelling in this age of doubt. We are 
to tell men that though much has been deter- 
mined for them by causes beyond their control, 
— their circumstances, their talents, their facul- 
ties, — one thing has not been determined, and 
that is what they will do with them. Much has 
been ordained before their birth, — their nation- 
ality, their family, their station in life, — but 
one thing has not been ordained, and that is 
whether they are to move from this starting- 
point towards life or towards death. They 
may be like men sunken in a nightmare dream 
of helplessness, muttering in their sleep, “If I 
209 


LIBERTY 


am to be saved, I shall be saved; if I am to be 
lost, I shall be lost,” — but we must cry to them 
with the voice of the Spirit: “ Awake, thou 
that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and 
Christ shall give thee light.” 


210 


VII 

SOVEREIGNTY 

HHHE questions about the world which science 
^ considers and answers, all have to do with 
secondary causes. Beyond that sphere she does 
not need to go, and within that sphere her wis- 
dom is sufficient. We come to her like curious 
children. We “want to see the wheels go 
round.” We want to know what the wheels 
are made of. She tells us, and there she stops. 
All that we have a right to ask of her is that 
she shall be true to facts, and that she shall 
confine herself to them. When the astronomer 
Laplace was reproached for not mentioning God 
in his treatise on the dynamics of the solar sys- 
tem, he answered, “I had no need of that hy- 
pothesis.” And this reply was just, as Mr. 
John Fiske has pointed out, because “in order 
to give a specific explanation of any single group 
of phenomena, it would not do to appeal to 
divine action, which is equally the source of all 
phenomena.” 

But the moment we take this reasonable 
211 


SOVEREIGNTY 

and modest position, we perceive that curiosity 
in regard to single groups of phenomena by no 
means satisfies or exhausts the activity of the 
questioning spirit in man. There is a deeper 
curiosity in regard to the relation of these single 
groups of phenomena to each other, and to 
ourselves, and to the possibility of a meaning, 
a purpose, an end, underlying all things and 
all their workings. Out of this deeper curiosity 
rise the questions which are most urgent and 
vital, — questions which, when we consider them 
abstractly, are philosophical, and condition the 
unity of our intellectual life; but when we con- 
sider them personally, they are religious, and 
upon their answer our spiritual peace and moral 
action absolutely depend. How are we to think 
about the things that we know? What are we 
to believe in regard to the things that science 
tells us we cannot know, but which we still 
feel are necessary conditions of all intelligent 
and right conduct? Is there an invisible unity 
beneath all the visible diversity of phenomena ? 
What is the nature of that unity, personal or 
impersonal, conscious or unconscious ? Is there 
anything behind the mechanical working of 
the world which corresponds to what there is 
in us when we make and use a machine or an 
instrument, when we plant and cultivate a gar- 
212 


SOVEREIGNTY 


den, or when we select and train a noble breed 
of animals? Is there a final cause towards 
which things work together, and a supreme 
power which guides them to that end ? 

This is the question of sovereignty. We can 
no more help asking it than we can help think- 
ing. 

We are in the world like voyagers on a ship. 
We inquire what the ship is made of; and 
science tells us, — iron and wood. And what 
makes it float ? The buoyancy of the air which 
it contains. And what makes it go? Steam. 
And what makes the steam? The heat of the 
furnace. Then, if we are sufficiently interested, 
science takes us down into the engine-room, 
and shows us all the condensers and pistons 
and cranks and wheels, more fully than they 
have ever been shown before; and we are 
amazed and profoundly grateful. We come up 
again into the light of day. We look into the 
overarching heaven, the home of sunshine and 
storm, the deep mother of light and darkness. 
We look out upon the great and wide sea, full 
of mystery and terror. New questionings spring 
to our lips. Where is the ship going ? Is there 
a captain on board? Does he know, does he 
care, what is to become of it ? Is he wise, is he 
a good captain? Can he direct the vessel 
213 


SOVEREIGNTY 


through tempests and dangers? Can he tell 
us how to work with him? Can we be sure of 
him, can we trust him ? 

Now to this questioning, scepticism gives a 
reply of desperate uncertainty; and positivism 
answers with a stern No ! The world is a der- 
elict vessel, and we are masterless and lost 
mariners. This answer has been expressed 
by a French poet in powerful and pathetic 
verse. 

“Jouet de Vouragan , qui Vemporie et le mene, 
EncombrS de tresors et d* agree submerges, 

Ce navire perdu y mais c'est le nef humaine, 

Et nous sommes les naufragSs. 

L’ equipage affolS manoeuvre en vain dans V ombre; 
VEpouvante est d bord, le Desespoir, le Deuil; 

Assise au gouvemail , la Fatality sombre 
Le dirige vers un Scueil” 

But Christ gives a very different answer. 
It seems as if his very words were chosen to 
contradict this view of life as a helpless, hope- 
less voyage, and humanity as a shipwrecked 
race. For what is it that he says to his disciples 
as they look out upon the mystery of existence ? 

“Seek not what ye shall eat, and what ye 
shall drink, neither be ye as a ship that is tossed 
on the waves of a tempestuous sea (m nerecopl - 
214 


SOVEREIGNTY 


£eo-0e), for your Father knoweth that ye have 
need of these things.” 1 

The vessel is not driving masterless over the 
ocean. The Captain is on board. He is God. 
He is also our Father. For all who trust and 
serve him, it is a sure voyage, a certain port, 
a safe harbour. 

I 

The doctrine of the presence and sovereignty 
of God in his world, in one form or another, is 
essential to the validity of any reasoning which 
attempts to go beyond the mere appearance of 
things. Without it we find ourselves, as one 
has well said, “put to permanent intellectual 
confusion.” Without it the world lies before 
us, as Pope wrote in the first draft of his Essay 
on Man , — 

“A mighty maze , but not without a plan.” 

And if we follow the poet in that cold philo- 
sophical deism which led him to revise his fa- 
mous line so that it now reads 

“A mighty maze , and all without a plan ” 

we are still in the dark, still confused and hope- 
less, unless we go further and learn enough of 

1 St. Luke 12 : 29. 

215 


SOVEREIGNTY 


him who made the plan, to trust him even when 
we cannot perfectly understand his working, 
and to confide absolutely in “His most holy, 
wise, and powerful preserving and governing 
all his creatures and all their actions.” 

This is what Christ gives us: a view of God 
in his world which requires faith to accept it, 
but which when it is accepted, satisfies the 
reason and the heart better than any other 
view, clears away many of the intellectual and 
moral difficulties which beset us, and becomes 
the inward source not of doubt and distress, 
but of certainty and peace. 

This is not true, we must admit, of some of 
the forms in which the doctrine of divine sov- 
ereignty has been preached in Christ’s name. 
They have often disregarded the facts of na- 
ture. They have often outraged the moral in- 
stincts of humanity. They have created new 
obstacles to faith. They have driven men back 
in dumb resentment to believe in the positivist’s 
“sombre Fatality,” rather than in an absentee 
God who has foreordained, by one and the same 
decree, all the evil and all the good, all the sor- 
row and shame and suffering that are in the 
world. 

Not so with Christ’s teaching. It is sane 
and sweet. It gives a reconciling, harmonizing, 
216 


SOVEREIGNTY 


atoning view of God’s sovereignty. And if we 
can see it clearly and preach it faithfully, it 
will be to-day, as it was in his day, one of the 
great attractions of the gospel for an age of 
doubt. 

II 

Christ’s doctrine of the divine sovereignty 
was both old and new. It was old because it 
recognised the truth, uttered so magnificently 
by prophets and psalmists, of God’s right and 
power to rule the universe which he has made. 
“Thy throne, 0 God, is for ever and ever.” 1 
“The Lord hath prepared his throne in the 
heavens and his kingdom ruleth over all.” 2 
“He doeth according to his will in the army 
of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the 
earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto 
him, What doest Thou ? ” 3 

But Christ’s doctrine was new because it 
revealed the presence of the sovereign God in 
the physical universe more simply, more natu- 
rally, more intimately, than it had ever been 
revealed before. How gentle, how plain is the 
language in which Jesus expresses this truth, 
compared with the flashing, rolling speech of 
the prophets ! 

1 Psalm 45:6. 2 Psalm 103 : 19. * Daniel 4 : 35. 

217 


SOVEREIGNTY 


The manifestations of divine power in the 
Old Testament appear chiefly as mighty works, 
exceptional forthputtings of supernal force. It 
seems sometimes as if they came from a dis- 
tance; as if God had withdrawn from the world 
and had been called back to it by the peril and 
the cry of his people. But Christ would teach 
us to feel that he has never gone away for an 
instant. He is always here. Nothing that 
happens is hidden from him. Nor does he hide 
himself from any who would behold him. We 
may see him every day, in the feeding of the 
birds, in the blossoming of the flowers, 

“And every wayside bush aflame with God” 

This view of the relation of God to the ma- 
terial world is not external and mechanical. 
It is inward and vital. God has not made the 
world and wound it up and left it to run by 
itself. He is in it, as really as a man is in the 
house that he inhabits, and all the potencies 
that move and animate it flow directly from 
him. The Jews thought that God had fabri- 
cated the universe in six days and sat down to 
rest on the seventh, laying aside his work as 
a clock-maker would put down a finished clock. 
But Christ said, “My Father worketh until 
now, and I work.” 1 Creation is not ended, it 

1 St. John 5 : 17. 

218 


SOVEREIGNTY 


is going on all the time. Yesterday was a crea- 
tive day; and so is to-day; and so to-morrow 
will be. The divine thought is still weaving 
its beautiful garment on the roaring loom of 
Time. 

But God’s activity in the world is not ca- 
pricious or disorderly. No one was more sen- 
sitive than Jesus to “the rhythmic element in 
nature, — the flow of rivers, the procession of 
stars, the antiphony of day and night, the 
silent but inviolate order of the seasons.” It 
was he who expressed the law of growth: “first 
the blade, then the ear, and after that the full 
corn in the ear.” 1 It was he who suggested 
the analogy of natural law in the spiritual world, 
applying the figure of germination to his own 
death and resurrection: “Except a com of 
wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth 
alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much 
fruit.” 2 The parables which he used to describe 
the kingdom of heaven were drawn from nature 
and based on law. It was like “leaven which a 
woman took and hid in three measures of meal 
until the whole was leavened,” or “like a grain 
of mustard seed, which a man took and sowed 
in his field; which indeed is the least of all seeds, 
but when it is grown it is the greatest among 

i St. Mark 4 : 28. 2 St. John 12 : 24. 

219 


SOVEREIGNTY 


herbs.” 1 He taught his disciples to look upon 
the regular and steadfast ordinances of nature 
as the proof that their Heavenly Father was 
mindful of them and would take care of them. 
You will not find any such superfluous phrase 
as “ special Providence” in the teaching of 
Jesus. His thought was of a general and uni- 
versal Providence, wide enough and deep enough 
to embrace the wants of all creatures and pro- 
vide for them. God’s children were not to trust 
in miracles for their daily bread; they were 
not to be always looking and calling for manna 
from the sky, water from the riven rock. They 
were to rest rather upon the course of nature 
in quiet confidence, and work with it in cheer- 
ful joy, knowing that he who clothes the grass 
of the field will much more clothe them, 2 — and 
by the same power working in the same way. 

Yet Jesus did not think of God as having 
exhausted all possible modes of his activity in 
those which are familiar to us. His presence 
in the world is of such a kind that it necessarily 
brings with it the power of direct, personal, 
infinitely varied action. Out of this power 
spring those strange signs and wondrous works 
which we call miracles. Jesus never said that 
they were against nature. He never even said 

1 St. Matt. 13 : 32, 33. 2 St. Matt. 6 : 30. 

220 


SOVEREIGNTY 


that they were supernatural. He claimed only 
that they were proofs of a divine mission, be- 
cause they were such works as could only come 
from God. They were signs, just as all uncom- 
mon and extraordinary acts are signs. But 
signs of what? Of personality, of that power 
of choice in modes of action which is the es- 
sential attribute of a free spirit. They were 
wrought in order that men might believe, not 
in order that they might be astonished; and 
just as truly in order that they might believe 
in the order of nature as in the Person who up- 
holds it by his presence. 

“An energy,” says Ruskin, “may be natural 
without being normal, and divine without being 
constant.” Jesus did not teach the reign of 
law. He taught the reign of God through law. 
And in order that men might be sure that the 
law did not bind God like a chain, but freely 
expressed his sovereign will, it was given unto 
Jesus to show men those rare works, unique 
and transcendent, like strokes of genius, which 
reveal, as if by flashes of light, the true relation 
between the sovereign God and the universe 
which he is making and ruling. 

It is always to this personal God that Jesus 
would direct the thoughts and confident affec- 
tions of men. How is it possible for any one 
221 


SOVEREIGNTY 


to miss his meaning, and translate it into some- 
thing entirely different, as Matthew Arnold 
does in his misinterpretation of what he calls 
“the secret of Jesus” ? It is not merely the joy 
and peace of self-renunciation that Jesus sets 
forth to his disciples. It is the inward quietude 
and rest of self -surrender to a loving Father 
who is also the Mighty God. And it is not 
from the sense of his resistless power, but from 
the consciousness of his love, of his Fatherhood, 
that peace comes. “Yea, Father, for so it was 
well-pleasing in thy sight .” 1 “Father, all 
things are possible unto thee; remove this cup 
from me: howbeit not what I will, but what 
thou wilt.” 2 “Father, into thy hands I com- 
mit my spirit.” 3 This is the secret of Jesus. 
He does not teach bare sovereignty to which 
we must yield because it is irresistible. He 
teaches sovereignty of a certain kind, — the 
sovereignty of a Father, who is better and more 
powerful than all earthly parents or rulers, and 
who will never forsake his world, nor suffer 
his children to slip from his mighty hand. 

Ill 

But sovereignty of this kind necessarily im- 
plies distinctions in the manner of its exercise. 

1 St. Matt. 11 : 26. 2 St. Mark 14 : 36. 

222 


3 St. Luke 23 : 46. 


SOVEREIGNTY 


It cannot possibly be conceived of in terms of 
any single force or confined to any one mode of 
operation. It must be flexible and discriminat- 
ing. It must include within itself as many 
forms of rule as there are forms of being under 
its dominion. What, for example, should we 
say of a king who had but one way of dealing 
with all his subjects, young and old, wise and 
ignorant, loyal and disloyal, and who treated 
his servants under precisely the same condi- 
tions as his horses and his chariots? Or what 
should we say of a father who attempted to 
regulate and rule his children without reference 
to their character, and who made no distinction 
between them and the furniture of his house? 
Yet this, in effect, is the theory of the divine 
sovereignty which has frequently been set forth 
by theologians as if it were the only one which 
did justice to the glory of God. 

“The will of God,” according to this theory, 
“is the irresistible force. It is the source of 
all things, all persons, all events. From it they 
all proceed, under it they all act, by an invari- 
able necessity. This will has already deter- 
mined from all eternity everything that comes 
to pass. Every character in the world, like 
every rock and every plant, is just what God 
willed it to be. Everything that happens, hap- 
223 


SOVEREIGNTY 


pens because he willed it and precisely as he 
willed it. The life of mankind is far from being 
in any sense a voyage, an adventure, a proba- 
tion. It is simply the process of printing a his- 
tory which has already been written and set 
in type down to the last letter. The great press 
is in motion. Our souls are the blank pages. 
On one is printed a foreordained prayer. On 
another a foreordained blasphemy. Death is 
the folding knife. Judgment is the act of bind- 
ing, in which the fair pages will be preserved 
and the foul pages rejected and burned. The 
sovereignty of God is exercised in seeing that 
the book goes through the press exactly as it 
was written, without the addition or subtrac- 
tion of a single syllable of the foreordained 
text / 5 

But surely, even if this theory were true and 
could be proved, it is not of a nature to give 
aid and comfort to those who are zealous for 
the glory of God. It does not really exalt and 
magnify the divine sovereignty, but narrows 
and degrades it. It does not call for the per- 
fect wisdom and unlimited resources of a potent 
Ruler able to meet emergencies, to overcome 
oppositions, to guide and direct intelligent and 
free subjects like himself, and to conduct a 
high enterprise, through all the difficulties that 
224 


SOVEREIGNTY 


may arise, to a successful end. It calls for 
qualities of a lower kind and a strictly limited 
scope; the exact knowledge and the applied 
strength of a skilful machinist; not the broad 
intelligence, the swift genius, the inexhaustible 
patience, and the triumphant personal influ- 
ence of a great Captain, a Master and Lord of 
men. 

It is conceivable, of course, that God might 
have chosen to create a universe in which his 
sovereignty should be exercised in this one un- 
varying line of foreordained necessity. Being 
supreme, he has both the right and the power 
to make such a sphere, or spheres, for the reve- 
lation of his attributes as may please him. But 
it is not humanly conceivable that he should 
have made this particular choice which is 
ascribed to him for his own gloiy. If he had 
chosen this kind of a universe, so far as we can 
see, it must have lowered and hidden his glory. 
It must have left him with a field in which the 
highest qualities of personality could not pos- 
sibly be exercised. It must have made all sub- 
sequent choice, and all approval or disapproval, 
and all truly moral government impossible. 
The existence of rewards and punishments, the 
sense of merit or demerit among the creatures 
of such a world, would be inexplicable. To 
225 


SOVEREIGNTY 


claim that this sense of responsibility, like all 
other parts of the system, may be a necessity, 
a legal fiction which is essential to the working 
of a scheme far above our comprehension and 
therefore above our judgment, makes it more 
awful, but not more admirable. If there is any 
validity whatever in our moral instincts, we 
need not hesitate to say, that from our present 
point of view, (which is for us the only one at- 
tainable,) this theory of the absolute and un- 
conditional sovereignty of God, exercised by 
one law of necessity over all creatures, is so far 
from being for God’s glory that it is apparently 
for his shame and dishonour. 

As a matter of fact, it has been, and still is, 
the most fertile mother of doubts. “A universe 
in which all the power was on the side of the 
creator, and all the morality on the side of crea- 
tion, would be one compared with which the 
universe of naturalism would shine out as a 
paradise indeed.” The idea of an irrespon- 
sible God ruling by an eternal and inflexible 
fiat over responsible men, is a moral nightmare, 
under which humanity groans, and from which 
it struggles to awake, even though it should 
have to open its eyes upon the blank darkness 
of an unsearchable night. Between the un- 
knowable God of agnosticism and the unlov- 
226 


SOVEREIGNTY 


able God of absolutism, there is indeed little 
to choose. But the choice, such as it is, lies 
on the side of agnosticism. It is unspeakably 
better to doubt God’s personality, his suprem- 
acy, his very being, than it is to doubt his 
eternal goodness and his moral integrity. 

But the teaching of Jesus is designed and 
fitted to deliver us, if we will accept it, from 
both of these doubts. He reveals a God who 
is not only Lord of all, but who exercises his 
sovereignty in discretion, in justice, and in 
love. He does not look upon all his creatures 
with the same eyes. He discriminates, he dis- 
tinguishes, he has regard to their differences 
of nature and character. The human soul is 
of more value to him than many sparrows . 1 
How much is a man better than a sheep ? 2 By 
so much as he is more like God, spiritual, free, 
responsible, immortal. These qualities, which 
God himself has created, God himself respects. 
Every word of Jesus takes it for granted that 
God is not an infinite Autocrat, a hard master, 
reaping where he has not sown, and gathering 
where he has not strewed, but a fair and equi- 
table Lord, who takes into consideration all the 
conditions of his subjects and renders unto all 
their dues. The forces of nature obey his will 
1 St. Matt. 10 : 81. 2 St. Matt. 12 : 12. 

227 


SOVEREIGNTY 


inevitably, and for them there is neither praise 
nor blame. The souls of men are invited to 
love him, and commanded to serve him, but 
they are left free to choose whether they will 
obey or disobey, and upon their choice the ap- 
proval and blessing of God depend. 

Who can question for a moment that this is 
the view of the divine sovereignty which un- 
derlies all the parables of Christ? The omnip- 
otence which he teaches is not sheer, absolute, 
unconditioned. It is a self-restrained power. 
It is able to limit itself, to act in such a way 
and under such conditions as God chooses to 
create. If he could not do this, he would not 
be truly omnipotent. If there were but one 
method in which he could manifest his will, 
and that the method of necessity, he would be 
forever shut out from personal relations, which 
can only exist where there are different wills, 
capable of agreement or disagreement, of co- 
operation or conflict, of harmony or discord. 

Jesus taught that God has actually chosen to 
limit the autocratic exercise of his sovereignty 
by creating beings who have the power of yield- 
ing to his will or of resisting it. 

From this resistance flow all the evil, sorrow, 
misery of the world. God does not ordain sin. 
God does not even permit sin, in the sense that 
228 


SOVEREIGNTY 

he allows it to exist without condemnation on 
his part. It may be a necessary feature of a 
world of free choice and moral probation. 
Jesus seems to imply as much when he says 
“It must needs be that offences come.” But 
he adds at once, “Woe unto that man by whom 
the offence cometh.” 1 That man is not doing 
the will of God. He is a rebel, a traitor, an 
apostate. When the tares appear in the field, 
Christ does not leave us to suppose for a mo- 
ment that they were planted by the same hand 
that sowed the good seed. He says, “An enemy 
hath done this.” 2 Satan, who is the embodi- 
ment of evil and the leader of all who are op- 
posed to God, is the great enemy, the adversary 
not only of souls, but also of the Divine will. 

Turn for a moment to the narrative of the 
temptation of Christ . 3 He was led up by the 
Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the 
devil. But did the same Spirit lead the devil? 
Was Satan acting under the divine sovereignty 
in the same sense, in the same way, that Jesus 
was? Set aside, if you will, the question of 
the personality of the evil one. There was a 
suggestion of evil before the mind of Jesus. 
Did that suggestion come from the same source 
as the holy strength that resisted it, — the all- 

1 St. Matt. 18 : 7. 2 St. Matt. 13 : 28. 3 St. Matt. 4 : 1-11. 

229 


SOVEREIGNTY 


creating, all-controlling will of God? Can the 
same fountain send forth sweet and bitter 
water? Why then should the one be called 
cursed and the other blessed? Such a view 
simply obliterates all moral distinctions. It 
completely undermines and ruins the signif- 
icance of Christ’s life as a free obedience to 
the will of God, and it utterly paralyses his 
gospel as a divine call to men to enter freely 
into the same obedience. 

Jesus teaches very distinctly that there are 
two spheres in which the sovereignty of God 
is exercised, — in heaven and on earth. These 
two spheres are not conceived locally but spiri- 
tually. They are realms in which the power of 
God is working under different conditions. In 
heaven the Divine will is unopposed, and there- 
fore the empire of heaven is peace and holiness 
and unbroken love. On earth the Divine will 
is opposed and resisted, and therefore earth is 
a scene of conflict and sin and discord. For 
this reason the kingdom of heaven must come 
to earth, it must win its way, it must strive 
with the kingdom of darkness and overcome it. 
God’s sovereignty in heaven is triumphant. 
God’s sovereignty on earth is militant, in order 
that it may triumph, — and triumph not in uni- 
versal destruction, but in the salvation of all 
230 


SOVEREIGNTY 


who will submit to it and embrace it and work 
with it, — triumph not by bare force, as gravi- 
tation triumphs over stones, but by holy love, 
as fatherly wisdom and affection triumph over 
the reluctance and rebellion of wayward chil- 
dren. 

It must be admitted frankly that this view 
of Divine sovereignty does not seem to be con- 
sistent with the theory of absolute divine fore- 
knowledge of all volitions and all events. This 
has been urged as a fatal objection against it. 
But the objection cannot be pressed because 
it lies in a region where our ignorance is so great 
that dogmatism is, to say the least, unbecom- 
ing. There may be some way of reconciling 
the self-limitation of God’s omnipotence with 
the certainty of his foreknowledge, which is 
beyond the reach of our logic. But whether 
there be any such reconciliation or not, one 
thing is clear: we have not the right to make 
a logical statement of our ignorance of one di- 
vine attribute a reason for refusing to accept, 
frankly and sincerely, Christ’s revelation of 
the mode in which another divine attribute is 
exercised. 

God knows everything. But when we say 
that, we mean simply that he knows every- 
thing which can be the object of knowledge. 

231 


SOVEREIGNTY 


He knows all things as they are. He does not 
know them as they are not. The very perfec- 
tion of his knowledge consists in its exact corre- 
spondence with the nature of its object. If an 
event is certain and foreordained, then God 
knows it as certain and foreordained. If it is 
contingent upon the free, self-determining ac- 
tion of a human will, then God knows it as con- 
tingent, for he himself has foreordained that it 
should be so. 

God waits to hear whether his children will 
call upon him in their distress; and if they call, 
he hears and helps them. If Jesus teaches any- 
thing, he teaches that prayer really influences 
the purpose and action of God. 

God waits to see whether his husbandmen 
will return to him the fruits of his vineyard; 
whether they will receive and honour the mes- 
sengers whom he sends unto them; and if they 
are rejected, he sends other messengers; and 
last of all he sends his son, saying, “It may be 
they will reverence him.” 1 But when this last 
maybe does not come to pass, then judgment 
falls upon the wicked husbandmen, not because 
they have fulfilled the secret will of the King, 
but because they have rebelled against him. 

This conception of God in his world, not as 

1 St. Luke 20 : 13. 

232 


SOVEREIGNTY 

the mere spectator of the fulfilment of his own 
immutable decrees, but as the Lord of Hosts, 
presiding over the great scene of conflict be- 
tween good and evil in the souls of men who can 
only attain to real holiness through real liberty, 
and warring mightily on the side of good in 
order that it may win the victory, infinitely 
exalts and glorifies him. We see him in the 
teaching of Jesus, as the High Captain of the 
armies of love, working salvation in the midst 
of the earth, pleading with men to accept his 
mercy, warning them to escape from his judg- 
ments, sustaining the good in their goodness, 
overthrowing the wicked in their wickedness, 
bringing light out of darkness and triumph out 
of defeat, amid all strifes and storms main- 
taining his kingdom of righteousness and peace 
and joy in the Holy Ghost. His sovereignty 
embraces human liberty as the ocean surrounds 
an island. His sovereignty upholds human 
liberty as the air upholds a flying bird. His 
sovereignty defends human liberty as the au- 
thority of a true king defends the liberty of 
his subjects, — nay, rather, as the authority of 
a father tenderly and patiently respects and 
protects the spiritual freedom of his children 
in order that they may learn to love and obey 
him gladly and of their own accord. For this 
233 


SOVEREIGNTY 


is the end of God’s sovereignty: that his king- 
dom may come; that his will may be done on 
earth, — not as it is done in the circling of the 
stars or in the blossoming of flowers, — but as 
it is done in heaven, where created spirits freely 
strike the notes that blend in perfect harmony 
with the music of the Divine Spirit. 

IV 

But does not the acknowledgment that God 
has thus limited the operation of his sover- 
eignty on earth by conditioning his actions 
upon the character and conduct of other beings 
than himself, throw us back into confusion and 
uncertainty? Does it not make the course of 
the world insecure and the end of all things 
doubtful ? 

It would do so if it were not for the other 
truth which Jesus reveals with equal clearness, 
that God is in the world guiding, ruling, and 
directing it, and that he has kept the supremacy 
in his own hands. He is the master of the ship; 
his hand is on the helm; and whether the sailors 
obey or mutiny, he will guide the vessel to her 
appointed haven. 

The power of evil is a finite, transient, self- 
destroying power. It disintegrates, it dies, it 
passes away with the enfeeblement and de- 
234 


SOVEREIGNTY 


struction of the soul that yields to it. But the 
power of goodness is eternal and incorruptible, 
because it is of God. Satan is the prince of 
this world, but his might is limited to the per- 
verted and enslaved wills that submit to him. 
He is not the ruler of nature. God is the mas- 
ter of winds and waves and earth and stars. 
The great battalions are on his side and under 
his control. If for one instant the cause of 
Christ were in real danger, he could summon 
celestial hosts without number to his assis- 
tance. 1 But because he knew this, he knew 
also that his cause was never in danger. He 
knew that his kingdom was an everlasting king- 
dom. He knew that he had already overcome 
the world. 

How serene and splendid are the words with 
which he reassures his disciples, again and 
again! “Fear not! Care not! Be not anxious ! 
0 thou of little faith , wherefore didst thou doubt ? 
Have faith in God ! Upon this rock will I build 
my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail 
against it ! Fear not , little flock, for it is your 
Father s good pleasure to give you the kingdom!” 
How glorious is the vision of that kingdom 
which Jesus unfolds as he looks forward to the 
new birth of earth and heaven in the perfect 

1 St. Matt. 26 : 53. 

23 5 


SOVEREIGNTY 


fulfilment of the purpose of God ! How abso- 
lute is the confidence with which he rests upon 
God’s power to work out all that may be needed 
to bring about that blessed consummation. 

Communicated by his divine influence to the 
hearts of his disciples, this faith has been a force 
of incalculable potency and inspiration in the 
lives of men. The noblest deeds of heroism 
and self-sacrifice and liberation have been 
wrought in the strength of it. The greatest 
conquests over self and sin, the supreme vic- 
tories of righteousness and love and peace in 
human hearts, have been won through this 
faith. Deus vult — God wills it! — is the war- 
cry that rouses the human will to its highest 
endeavour. 

Here is a man struggling against evil, long- 
ing and striving to rise to high and holy life. 
And if he is alone in the struggle, what assur- 
ance has he, what promise or hope of success? 
He may fail, he may perish. But when the 
great truth flashes into his heart that God is 
with him in the fight, that God is “not will- 
ing that any should perish but that all should 
come to repentance,” 1 that God is the captain 
of his salvation and the leader of his soul, — 
then he is emancipated, then he triumphs, then 

1 2 Pet. 3 : 9. 

236 


SOVEREIGNTY 


he is joined to the Invincible. He cries with 
Paul, “If God is for us, who is against us?” 1 
Here is a good man called to endure sharp 
and heavy trials, to drink the waters of af- 
fliction, to pass through the fires of pain, to 
go down into the dark valley of the shadow. 
Alone, it would be impossible; human patience 
could not endure it, human courage could not 
face it, human wisdom could not solve the mys- 
tery of goodness called to suffer. But with 
God, believing that he is sovereign, and that 
he is love, — how different it is ! Now you shall 
see the wondrous spectacle of a frail, gentle, 
mortal soul, strengthened by simple submission 
to God’s will, persecuted but not forsaken, 
cast down but not destroyed, trembling but 
victorious. Such a soul cries: “The will of 
God be done. It cannot be his will that I should 
lose my faith. It cannot be his will that I 
should deny him. It cannot be his will that I 
should be lost, for he is good, he is my King, 
my Father, he will save me. It may be his 
will that I should suffer trial for the purifying 
of my faith, for a more perfect fellowship with 
Christ, for a better reward in heaven. Even 
so, Father, for so it seemeth good in Thy 
sight.” 

i Rom. 8:31. 

237 


SOVEREIGNTY 


“7 welcome all Thy sovereign will , 

For all that will is love ; 

And when I know not what Thou dost y 
I wait the light above” 

How radiant and magnificent is that truth 
as it appears in the history of the Church ! The 
people of God have often been persecuted and 
oppressed, yet God has been on their side, and 
no weapon that has been formed against them 
has prospered. How often has God proved his 
sovereignty by preserving and rescuing and 
delivering his people from overwhelming perils ! 
Even when it has seemed to be otherwise, even 
when the Church has appeared forsaken and 
helpless, when the billows of persecution have 
rolled fathom-deep above her head, when ava- 
lanches of falsehood have buried the truth out 
of sight, it has only been for a time, and the 
end has been the victory of the defeated. The 
blood of the martyrs has been the seed of the 
Church. The boastful shouts of error have been 
the advertisement of the silent truth. Error 
has had kings and generals, philosophers and 
orators, empires and armies; truth has had 
God. Error has had swords and spears, ships 
and cannons, fortresses and dungeons, racks 
and fires; truth has had God. God and one 
make a majority. Unless the Church doubts, 
238 


SOVEREIGNTY 


she cannot fear. Unless the Church denies, 
she cannot despair. In the darkest days, when 
the confusion seems greatest, the conflict most 
unequal, she can look out on the great battle- 
field and cry 

“History's 'pages but record 

One deatli-grapple in the darkness ' twixt old systems and 
the Word ; 

Truth forever on the scaffold , Wrong forever on the throne , — 
Y et that scaffold sways the future , and behind the dim un- 
known 

Standeth God within the shadowy keeping watch above his 
own." 

But is it for the Church alone, is it not for 
the whole world that this truth of God’s sov- 
ereignty shines? To our eyes the conflict of 
life and death, of good and evil, seems to be 
undecided, and we think it may be perpetual. 
The dust blinds us; the uproar bewilders us; 
as far as our sight can pierce we see nothing 
but the rolling strife, — sin always in arms 
against holiness, the created will always resist- 
ing and defying the creator. But Christ sees 
that the conflict is decided, though it is still 
in progress. Christ sees that the victory is 
won, though it is not yet manifest. On the hill 
of the cross the captain of salvation met the 
captain of sin and conquered him. Calvary is 
239 


SOVEREIGNTY 


victory. Through death Christ hath overcome 
him that had the power of death, that is the 
devil . 1 Satan has received his mortal wound; 
and if he still fights more fiercely, it is because 
he knoweth that he hath but a short time . 2 
The day is coming when he must perish; the 
day is coming when sin and strife shall be no 
more; the day is coming when Christ shall put 
all enemies under his feet 8 and shout above 
the grave of death, “O thou enemy, destruc- 
tions are come to a perpetual end”; the day 
is coming when the great ship of the world, 
guided by the hand of the Son of God, shall 
float out of the clouds and storms, out of the 
shadows and conflicts, into the perfect light of 
love, and God shall be all in all. The tide that 
bears the world to that glorious end is the sov- 
ereignty of God. 

“0 mighty river , strong , eternal Will, 

In which the streams of human good and ill 
Are onward swept, conflicting, to the sea , — 

The world is safe because it floats in Thee” 

1 Heb. 2 : 14. 2 Rev. 12 : 12. 2 1 Cor. 15 : 25-28. 


240 


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SERVICE 

npHAT strange and searching genius, Na- 
A thaniel Hawthorne, in one' of his spiritual 
phantasies has imagined a new Adam and Eve 
coming to the earth after a Day of Doom has 
swept away the whole of mankind, leaving their 
works and abodes and inventions, — all that 
bears witness to the present condition of hu- 
manity, — untouched and silently eloquent. The 
representatives of a new race enter with wonder 
and dismay the forsaken heritage of the old. 
They pass through the streets of a depopulated 
city. The sharp contrast between the splen- 
dour of one habitation and the squalor of an- 
other fills them with distressed astonishment. 
They are painfully amazed at the unmistakable 
signs of inequality in the conditions of men. 
They are troubled and overwhelmed by the 
evidence of the great and miserable fact that 
one portion of earth’s lost inhabitants was rich 
and comfortable and full of ease, while the 
multitude was poor and weary and heavy-laden 
with toil. 


241 


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This feeling of sorrowful perplexity over the 
unevenness and apparent injustice of human 
life, which the prose poet puts into the heart 
of his new Adam and Eve, is really but a reflec- 
tion from the tender and pitiful depths of his 
own. Who is there that has not sometimes 
felt it rising within his own breast, — this pro- 
found sentiment of inward trouble and grief, 
this feeling of spiritual discord and wondering 
repugnance at the sight of a world in which the 
good things of life are so unequally distributed, 
in which at the very outset of existence, before 
the factor of personal merit or demerit, the 
element of work and wages, enters into the 
problem at all, so much is given to one man 
and so little to another man that they seem to 
be forever separated and set at enmity with 
each other by the unfairness with which they 
are treated ? 

This sentiment has been strangely deepened 
and intensified in the nineteenth century by 
innumerable causes, until it has become one 
of the most marked characteristics of the pres- 
ent age. Never before have men felt the sor- 
rows and hardships of their fellow-men so 
widely, so keenly, so constantly as to-day. In 
one sense this is the honour and glory of our 
age. 


242 


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But in another sense it is the greatest peril 
of our age. For it has been seized by the spirit 
of scepticism and transformed into an ally of 
doubt. It has been used as an argument against 
the possibility of discovering a moral order in 
such a “hungry, ill-conditioned world” as this. 
Man’s inhumanity to man has been employed 
to prove God’s indifference or injustice to man. 
The feeling of sorrow and perplexity has been 
aggravated by wild and whirling words into 
a passion of resentment against the present 
conditions of life. Rash and sweeping schemes 
for their total destruction have been proclaimed 
as a new gospel. Christianity has been first 
claimed as a supporter of these schemes, and 
then denounced and repudiated as the chief 
obstacle to their success. The cry goes up that 
the whole world is out of joint. “Everything 
is wrong and crooked and unfair: the race of 
man has been deceived and maltreated and 
oppressed by the creation of such an order of 
life as the present. If God created it, so much 
the worse for God. But it is almost certain 
that he did not create it, almost certain that 
there is no God. The world of inequality is 
man’s mistake. There is but one thing to do, 
and that is to break it all up, at once and ut- 
terly, and begin anew. Create a new world 
243 


SERVICE 


if possible. If not, then let the old wreck sink 
and be blotted out, for it is worse, infinitely 
worse, than the blank desolation of an uncon- 
scious chaos.” 

This cry of anger and despair rings to-day 
in the ears of all earnest and thoughtful men 
and women. We are filled with perturbation 
and distress and deep anxiety to know the 
right and to do it, to understand the meaning 
of this exceeding great and bitter cry, and the 
duty to which it calls us. Is it indeed the ut- 
terance of true equity and wisdom ? Is it the 
voice of a new Adam, appearing after so many 
ages of delusion, with open eyes to condemn 
the old world, and with ruthless hand to break 
it in pieces ? Must we welcome him and hearken 
to him and believe in him, as the true judge 
and regenerator and leader of mankind? 

The very form of the question points the 
way to the only Master who can answer it. 
Hawthorne’s picture of the second Adam was 
a poetic dream. But the Apostle Paul uses the 
same figure to reveal a historic truth. “The 
first man Adam became a living soul. The last 
Adam became a life-giving spirit. Howbeit 
that is not first which is spiritual, but that 
which is natural; then that which is spiritual. 
The first man is of the earth, earthy; the 
244 


SERVICE 

second man is of heaven.” 1 The new Adam 
has already come upon the earth, eighteen cen- 
turies ago. He was called Jesus. With pure 
and perfect heart he entered into the world, 
not desolate and depopulate, but thronged 
with the myriads of toiling, suffering men. 
With clear eyes he looked upon their different 
conditions, their manifold inequalities, their 
outward and inward joys and sorrows. With 
steadfast heart he set himself to the divine 
task of beginning a new humanity and inaugu- 
rating the kingdom of heaven on earth. 

He did not strive nor cry, neither was his 
voice heard in the streets . 2 He did not protest 
against the moral government of the universe, 
because one man was rich and another poor, 
one strong and another weak, one happy and 
another wretched, one good and another evil. 
He did not say that God must be unjust be- 
cause he has given, in things spiritual as well 
as in things temporal, much to one and little 
to another. He did not teach his followers 
that the only way to help the world was to rebel 
against this order, and refuse to submit to it, 
and denounce it, and fight against it. He did 
not even proclaim a social and political revo- 
lution. He was one of the most peaceful, orderly, 

1 1 Cor. 15 : 45-47. 2 St. Matt. 12 : 19. 

245 


SERVICE 


obedient, loyal citizens of all that subject land 
of Palestine; rendering unto Caesar the things 
that were Caesar’s, discharging every duty of 
his lowly lot with cheerful fidelity, and labour- 
ing patiently for his daily bread. 

He was not blind, nor dull of heart to feel 
the troubles of life. The problem of inequal- 
ity lay wide open before him. But it did not 
agitate nor distract him. He neither raved nor 
despaired. He was serene and sane. 

“He saw life clearly and he saw it whole .” 

He looked through the problem to its true solu- 
tion. He knew the secret which justifies the 
ways of God to man. He knew the secret by 
which an eternal harmony is to be brought 
into the apparent discords of life. He knew 
the secret by which men living in an unequal 
world, and accepting its inequality as the con- 
dition of their present existence, can still be- 
come partakers of a perfect, peaceful equity, 
and citizens of an invisible, imperishable city 
of God. That secret was none other than the 
highest, holiest teaching of Jesus, the divine 
truth of election to service. 


246 


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I 

Before we set our hearts to take in the mean- 
ing of this truth, let us try to get them in tune 
for it by listening to some of the other teach- 
ings of Jesus which are meant to quiet and 
steady us in the contemplation of the uneven- 
ness of human existence. 

And first of all he reminds us that our real 
happiness in this world does not depend upon 
our outward condition, but upon our inward 
state. “The life is more than meat and the 
body than raiment.” 1 “A man’s life consisteth 
not in the abundance of the things which he 
possesseth.” 2 The land of wealth is not the 
empire of peace. Joy is not bounded on the 
north by poverty, on the east by obscurity, 
on the west by simplicity, and on the south by 
servitude. It runs far over these borders on 
every side. The lowliest, plainest, narrowest 
life may be the sweetest. Most of the disciples 
of Jesus were peasants, but they were as happy, 
as contented, even in this world, as if they had 
been princes. There was more gladness and 
singleness of heart in that frugal breakfast of 
broiled fish and bread beside the boats on the 
shore of the sea of Tiberias , 3 than in the splen- 

1 St. Matt. 6 : 25. 2 St. Luke 12 : 15. 8 St. John 21 : 1-13. 

247 


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did feast in the house of Simon the Pharisee. 
Life has its compensations and its comforts for 
all estates. Work means health. Obscurity 
means freedom. The best pleasures are those 
that are most widely diffused. 

I do not mean to say that Jesus overlooked 
the bitter hardships of toil under bad masters, 
under false and cruel and oppressive laws. I 
do not mean to say that he would not have 
been full of pity and indignation at the sight 
of the crushed and crippled state of great multi- 
tudes of human beings in our modern cities. 
But I am sure that he teaches us to believe 
that the real source of human misery is not in 
poverty, but in a bad heart; that envy is not a 
virtue, but a vice; that life is a great gift to 
all who will receive it cheerfully and content- 
edly, even in a world where its material things 
are unevenly distributed; and that the true 
beatitudes are not monopolies reserved for the 
few, but blessings within the reach of all, and 
gloriously independent of all outward contrasts 
in the lives of men. Indeed it seems as if he 
would go even beyond this, and remind us that 
some of these blessings could not be ours ex- 
cept in a world of contrast and temporal in- 
equality. Of the eight beatitudes which Jesus 
pronounced, four at least, — the blessing of the 
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mourners, and of the meek, and of the merciful, 
and of the peace-makers, — imply the existence 
of differences and degrees among men; and 
one — the blessing of those who are persecuted 
for righteousness’ sake — is only possible in a 
world where evil is sometimes actually more 
powerful and prosperous than good. 

I have not been able to find a single word of 
Christ that looks forward to a time in which 
there shall be no more inequalities on earth, no 
more rich and poor, no more masters and ser- 
vants, no more wise men, and no more babes. 
But there are many words of his that pierce 
with mild and gracious light through all these 
outward distinctions to reveal the truth that 
this kind of inequality is superficial and illusory, 
that the babes rejoice in beholding those mys- 
teries which are hidden from the wise and pru- 
dent, that servants are often nobler and more 
free than their masters, that the poor may have 
treasures laid up in heaven which are beyond 
all earthly reckoning, and that this is the true 
wealth which brings contentment and peace. 

It is a great mistake to suppose that Jesus 
preached a gospel which was melancholy and 
depressing for those who received it in this 
world. It is a great mistake to suppose that 
he taught men that they must resign them- 
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selves to earthly misery and make the journey 
of life as a weary and mournful pilgrimage. 
He came to cheer and brighten the hearts of 
all who would accept his guidance and tread 
the path of virtue with courage and fidelity 
and hope. He came to give us rest in the midst 
of toil, and that refreshment which only comes 
from weariness in a good cause. He came to 
tell us not to despair of happiness, but to re- 
member that the only way to reach it on earth 
is to seek first usefulness, first the kingdom of 
God, and then the other things shall be added. 
He that loseth his life for Christ’s sake shall 
not lose it but find it, 1 — find it in deep inward 
contentment, 

“And vital feelings of delight” 

which make up the true and incomparable joy 
of living. 

Jesus does not differ from other masters in 
that he teaches us to scorn earthly felicity. 
The divine difference is that he teaches us how 
to attain earthly felicity, under all circum- 
stances, in prosperity and in adversity, in sick- 
ness and in health, in solitude and in society, 
by taking his yoke upon us, and doing the will 
of God, and so finding rest unto our souls. That 

1 St. Matt. 10 : 39. 

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is the debt which every child of God owes 
not only to God, but also to his own soul, — 
to find the real joy of living. 

“‘Joy is a duty ’ — so vrith golden lore 
The Hebrew rabbis taught in days of yore. 

And happy human hearts heard in their speech 
Almost the highest wisdom man can reach. 

But one bright peak still rises far above , 

And there the Master stands whose name is Love , 
Saying to those whom heavy tasks employ 
* Life is divine when duty is a joy.’” 

The second point in the teaching of Jesus 
which is meant to rectify our views of the un- 
evenness of the world, is his doctrine of a future 
life, — not a different life, but the same life mov- 
ing on under new conditions and to new issues. 
This world is not all. There is another world, 
a better age, a more perfect state of being, in 
which the sorrows and losses of those who now 
suffer unjustly will be compensated, and in 
which — let us not hesitate to say it as calmly 
and as firmly as Jesus said it — those who have 
unjustly and selfishly enjoyed their good things 
in this world will suffer in their turn. It is the 
fashion nowadays to sneer at such teaching 
as this; to call it “other- worldliness”; to de- 
clare that it has no real power to strengthen 
or uplift the hearts of men. Jesus did not think 
£51 


SERVICE 


so. Jesus made much of it. Jesus pressed home 
upon the hearts of men the consolations and 
warnings of immortality. He showed the miser- 
able failure of the man who filled his barns and 
lost his empty soul . 1 He bade his disciples, 
when they suffered and were persecuted for 
righteousness’ sake, “ rejoice and be exceeding 
glad, for great is your reward in heaven.” 2 

Let us not impoverish our gospel by flinging 
away, in our fancied superiority, this precious 
truth. It is impossible to justify the present 
fragmentary existence of man if we look at it 
and speak of it as the whole of his life. Earth 
has mysteries which naught but heaven can 
explain. Earth has sorrows which naught but 
heaven can heal. Yes, and earth has evils, 
black and secret offences of man against man, 
false and foul treasons against the love of God, 
crimes which take a base advantage of his pa- 
tience and long-suffering and hide themselves 
like poisonous serpents in the shelter of the 
very laws which he has made for the good of 
the world, sins all entangled with the present 
structure of society and beyond the reach of 
human law, undiscoverable iniquities, unpar- 
donable and unpunishable cruelties, — which 
naught but hell can disclose and consume. The 

1 St. Luke 12 : 16-21. 2 St. Matt. 5 : 12. 

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errors of time call for the balance of eternity. 
Patient labour, patient endurance, patient resig- 
nation in this present life shall be greatly re- 
warded in the life to come. Now is the day 
of toil and trial; but the pay-day will surely 
dawn. Much of the best that is done in this 
world receives no earthly wages. Those to 
whom it is done, — the poor, the maimed, the 
lame, the blind, — “ they cannot recompense 
thee; but thou shalt be recompensed at the 
resurrection of the just.” 1 

Thus Jesus teaches; and he shows us that 
the present order of inequality, so far from 
being an obstacle to this result, is the very 
means by which it is to be accomplished. The 
discipline of this uneven life is the education 
by which alone we can be prepared for the 
heavenly life. Jesus does not present himself 
as a rectifier of life’s unequal conditions of out- 
ward fortune. He distinctly refuses this office. 
‘‘Man, who made me a judge or a divider over 
you ?” 2 Jesus does not preach an equality 
which is synonymous with life on a dead level. 
He does not preach equality at all. He preaches 
fraternity. And fraternity implies differences, 
— older and younger, stronger and weaker, 
higher and lower. The elder brother is the 

2 St. Luke 12 : 14. 


1 St. Luke 14 : 14. 


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heir; all that the father has is his; but his sin 
lies in holding fast to his inheritance selfishly, 
in shutting out his younger brother, in for- 
getting and denying that he is a brother at 
all . 1 The distinctions of life are not meant to 
obscure, but to reveal and to beautify its 
best virtues. Out of dependence spring the 
sweet blossoms of gratitude and loyalty. Out 
of mastership flow the refreshing streams of 
forbearance and justice and mercy. The apostle 
tells us that the love of money is a root of all 
kinds of evil . 2 But Christ shows us the deeper 
truth that the right use of money is a means 
of all kinds of good. “It is more blessed to 
give than to receive.” 3 Every gift of Prov- 
idence to us is an opportunity and therefore 
a responsibility, and the blessing does not come 
with the gift until we recognize the responsi- 
bility, and use the opportunity. The mammon 
of unrighteousness can only be destroyed by 
a process of transformation which transmutes 
it into the pure gold of the celestial treasury . 4 
The name of that process is charity. And the 
translation of that name is wise and holy love. 

It is said nowadays that Christianity means 
communism, and that it is the duty of all Chris- 

1 St. Luke 15 : 25-32 

3 Acts 20 : 35. 


2 1 Tim. 6 : 10. 

4 St. Luke 16 : 19. 


254 


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tians to give away everything that they possess. 
It is strange that Christ never proclaimed this 
duty except to one man, and that man was not 
a Christian . 1 Of course it must be admitted 
at once that this would be the duty of all Chris- 
tians if it could be shown that it would be for 
the real good of their fellow-men. But this 
never has been shown. On the contrary, com- 
munism has always turned out badly. It was 
tried in Jerusalem, in a limited way, when the 
early Christians sold all that they had and made 
a common purse; but it led, in less than ten 
years, to confusion and strife, and sank the 
Jerusalem church into a condition of pauperism 
and dependence upon the other churches, which 
had avoided the well-meant but dangerous 
experiment. It was tried in France, under 
atheistic auspices, and its fruit was wide-spread 
misery and injustice. It was tried to some 
degree in England, under a system of poor laws 
which were based upon the idea that every 
man had a right to eat whether he would work 
or not, and it resulted in such disorder and 
demoralization that it had to be discarded as 
a menace to society. 

There is nothing in the teachings of Christ 
which would make us blind to these plain les- 

i St. Mark 10 : 21. 

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sons of history. On the contrary, he desires 
and commands us to discover and do that which 
will really bless and help our fellow-men. 
“Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,” 1 — 
the same kind of love, the same inward regard 
for the higher ends and aims of life, which is the 
saving grace of the individual soul, is to be the 
saving grace of society. And what kind of 
love is that ? It is a wise and holy love, a love 
which puts character first and comfort second, 
a love which seeks to purify and bless and up- 
lift the whole man. Such a love may be shown 
by withholding as truly as by bestowing. False 
charity pampers self and pauperizes others. 
True charity educates self by helping others. 
The so-called Christian who never gives is a 
false Christian. The Christian who gives care- 
lessly, blindly, indiscriminately, however gen- 
erously, is a very imperfect Christian. The 
Christian who gives thoughtfully, seriously, 
fraternally, bending his best powers to the ac- 
complishment of a real benefaction of his fel- 
low-men, bestowing himself with his gift, is 
in the true and only way of the following of 
Jesus. 

Preach this truth. Preach it home to the 
hearts of men, without fear or favour for rich 

1 St. Matt. 22 : 39. 

256 


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or poor. Preach it home to your own heart 
so close that it shall save you from the minis- 
ter’s besetting sins of spiritual selfishness and 
cant. Tell the Lady Bountiful that she is not 
called to discard her ladyhood, but to give her- 
self with all her refinements, with all her ac- 
complishments, with all that has been given to 
her of sweetness and light, to the ennobling 
service of humanity. Tell the Merchant-Prince 
that he is not called to abandon his place of 
influence and power, but to fill it in a princely 
spirit, to be a true friend and father to all who 
are dependent upon him, to make his prosper- 
ity a fountain of blessing to his fellow-men, to 
be a faithful steward of Almighty God. And 
then let us tell ourselves, as members of the 
so-called “educated classes,” to whom God has 
given even greater gifts than those of rank and 
riches, — privileges of knowledge, opportunities 
of culture, free access to the stored-up wisdom 
of the ages, — let us tell ourselves with unflinch- 
ing fidelity that God will hold us to a strict 
account for all these things. If our salt loses 
its savour it shall be trodden under foot of men. 
If our culture separates us from humanity we 
shall be cast into the outer darkness. Our light 
must shine or be shamefully extinguished. 
Every faculty and every gift we possess must 
257 


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be honestly and entirely consecrated to the 
service of man, in Christ’s name and for Christ’s 
sake. This is the gospel for the present age, 
and for every age. This is the way in which 
the kingdom of heaven is to be established on 
earth. This is the way in which the inequality 
of this mortal life is to be transfigured and ir- 
radiated with a divine equity. “What we look 
for, work for, pray for, as believers, is a nation 
where class shall be bound to class by the fullest 
participation in the treasure of the one life; 
where the members of each group of workers 
shall find in their work the development of 
their character and the consecration of their 
powers: where the highest ambition of men 
shall be to be leaders of their own class, so using 
their special powers without waste and follow- 
ing the common traditions to noble issues: 
where each citizen shall know, and be strength- 
ened by the knowledge, that he labours not for 
himself only, nor for his family, nor for his coun- 
try, but for GOD.” 

II 

Thus far the teaching of Christ leads us with 
clear serenity in our understanding of the dif- 
ferences among men in the distribution of the 
goods of this present world. But the deeper 
258 


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problem still remains untouched. There is an 
apparent inequality in the bestowal of spiritual 
blessings. In the life of the soul also, it seems 
that much is given to one and little to another. 
Some men are born very close to the kingdom 
of heaven and powerfully drawn by unseen 
hands to enter its happy precincts. Other men 
are born far away from the gates of light, and 
it looks to us as if all the influences of their life 
were hindrances rather than helps to holiness. 
There is an undeniable contrast in the religious 
world which can only be interpreted as a divine 
foreordination, — that is to say, an act by which 
some men are set before others, given the pre- 
cedence, offered an earlier and apparently an 
easier opportunity of spiritual life. If God is 
sovereign, this act, by which the means of grace 
are unevenly dispensed, must be the result of a 
divine choice. 

The formal recognition of this choice is the 
doctrine of election. It is an inevitable doc- 
trine. It is founded upon facts which admit 
of no denial. And it brings every thoughtful 
and earnest soul face to face with the question 
of questions, upon the answer to which the 
nature and reality of religion depend. 

Is God arbitrary, is God partial, is God un- 
just? Does he bless some of his children and 
259 


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leave the rest under an irremediable curse with- 
out a single reason which can be exhibited to 
human faith and justified in perfect love? In 
the last and highest realm of life, the realm of 
the spirit, does he make it more blessed to re- 
ceive than to give, and exercise his sovereignty 
in favouritism, and establish heaven as a king- 
dom of infinite and eternal and inexplicable 
inequality ? 

It is an idle thing to answer this question by 
an appeal to God’s absolute right to dispose of 
all his creatures as he will. For the very essence 
of true religion is the faith that he is such a 
God that he wills to dispose of all his creatures 
wisely and fairly and in perfect love. And the 
very essence of a true revelation, as the mes- 
sage which calls religion into being, is that it 
makes God’s wisdom and fairness and love 
manifest, and so helps us to understand and 
adore and trust him, not only for ourselves 
but for the whole world. 

It is an idle thing to answer this question by 
saying that God is under no obligation to be 
good to everybody, and therefore that he may 
be good to whomsoever he pleases. The idea 
of an irresponsible God is a moral mockery. 
Poisonous doubt exhales from it as malaria from 
a swamp. To teach that all men are God’s 
260 


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debtors, and that therefore it is right for him 
to remit the debt of one man, and to exact the 
penalty from another to the last farthing, is to 
teach what is logically true and morally false. 
Our hearts recoil from such a doctrine. If God 
has made us, and made us spiritual paupers* 
utterly incapable of anything good, we are not 
his debtors. Jesus teaches us that God asks of 
us only to give as freely as we have received . 1 
He demands only that which he himself has. 
made us able to pay. And he forgives like the 
good master in the parable, with a free pardon 
which needs but the confession of helplessness 
and poverty to call it forth . 2 

It is an idle thing to answer this question by 
an appeal to ignorance, and to say that God 
elects some men to be saved and leaves the rest 
of mankind to be lost simply for his own un- 
searchable and inexplicable glory! For God’s 
glory, as revealed by religion, is identical with 
his goodness. Faith, true and joyful and up- 
lifting faith, answers only to a gospel which 
makes that identity more clear and luminous,, 
and shows that the divine election in the realm 
of grace is perfectly consistent with that wide 
and deep love wherewith God so loved the whole 
world that he sent his only begotten Son that. 

1 St. Matt. 10:8. 2 St. Matt. 18 : 27. 

261 


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whosoever believeth in him should not perish 
but have everlasting life. 

Now it is because men have forgotten this 
that they have found no answer, or a false and 
misleading answer, to the problem of inequality 
in the spiritual world. It is because they have 
torn the doctrine of election from its roots in 
the divine love, and petrified it with unholy 
logic, that it has lost its beauty, its perfume, 
its power of fruitfulness to everlasting life. We 
must go back from the dead skeleton as it is 
preserved in the museum of theology to the 
living plant as it blossoms in the field of the 
Bible. We must go back of Jonathan Edwards, 
and back of John Calvin, and back of Augus- 
tine, to St. Paul, and see how, under his hand, 
all the mysterious facts of election as they are 
unfolded in human history, break into flower 
at last in the splendid faith that “God hath 
shut up all unto disobedience that he might 
have mercy upon all .” 1 We must go still 
farther back, to Christ, and learn from him 
that election is simply the way in which God 
uses his chosen ones to serve the world, — the 
divine process by which the good seed is sown 
and scattered far and wide and the heavenly 
harvest multiplied a thousand-fold. “I elected 

1 Romans 11 : 32. 

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you,” he says to his disciples and to us, “I 
elected you, and appointed you, that ye should 
go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should 
abide.” 1 

Christ’s doctrine of election is a living, fra- 
grant, fruitful doctrine. It is one of the most 
beautiful things in Christianity. It is the very 
core and substance of the gospel, translated from 
the heart of God into the life of man. It is the 
divine law of service in spiritual things. It is 
the supreme truth in the revelation of an all- 
glorious love; the truth that God chooses men 
not to be saved alone, but to be saved by saving 
others, and that the greatest in the kingdom of 
heaven is he who is most truly the servant of 
all. 

Is not this true of Christ himself? He is 
the great example of what it means to be elect. 
He is the beloved Son in whom the Father is 
well pleased. And he says “Behold, I am in 
the midst of you as he that serveth.” 2 Service 
was the joy and crown of his life. Service was 
the refreshment and the strength of his soul, 
the angel’s food, the “meat to eat” of which 
his disciples did not know . 3 

Was not this the lesson that he was always 
teaching them by practice and by precept, that 

2 St. Luke 22 : 27. 3 St. John 4 : 32. 

263 


3 St. John 15:16. 


SERVICE 


they must be like him if they would belong 
to him, that they must share his service if they 
would share his election ! “I have appeared 
unto thee for this purpose/’ he said to Saul, 
x ‘to make thee a servant ( inrrjperrjv , a rower in 
the ship), and a witness both of those things 
which thou hast seen and of the things in the 
which I will appear unto thee.” 1 The vision 
of Christ is the call to service. And if Paul 
had not been obedient to the heavenly vision 
could Saul have made his calling and election 
sure? But he answered it with a noble faith. 
“It pleased God to reveal his son in me in order 
that I might preach him among the nations .” 2 
Henceforward, wherever he might be, among 
his friends in Cilicia, in the dungeon at Philippi, 
on the doomed vessel drifting across the storm- 
tossed sea, in the loneliness of his Roman prison, 
this was the one object of his life, to be a faith- 
ful servant of Christ, and therefore, as Christ 
was, a faithful servant of mankind . 3 

How can we interpret Christ’s parables, with- 
out this truth? The parables of the Pounds 
and the Talents are both pictures of election 
to service . They both exhibit the sovereignty 
of God in distributing his gifts; they both turn 
upon the idea of man’s accountability for re- 

1 Acts 26: 16. 1 Gal. 1:16. 

264 


3 2 Cor. 4 : 5. 


SERVICE 


ceiving and using them; and they both declare 
that the reward will be proportioned to fidelity 
in serving. The nature and meaning of this is 
explained by Christ in his great description of 
the judgment, which immediately follows the 
parable of the Talents in St. Matthew’s Gos- 
pel . 1 Many of those who have known him will 
be rejected at last because they have not served 
their fellow-men. Many of those who have 
not known him will be accepted because they 
have ministered lovingly, though ignorantly, 
to the wants and sorrows of the world. 

Service is the key-note of the heavenly king- 
dom, and he who will not strike that note shall 
have no part in the music. The King in the 
parable of the Wedding Feast 2 chose and called 
his servants, not to sit down at ease in the 
palace, but to go out into the highways and 
bid every one that they met to come to the 
marriage. And if one of those servants had 
refused or betrayed his mission, if he had neg- 
lected his Master’s business, and sat down on 
the steps of the palace or walked pleasantly in 
the garden until the supper was ready, do you 
suppose that he would have found a place or a 
welcome at the feast? His soul would have 
stood naked and ashamed without the wedding- 

2 St. Matt. 22 : 1-13. 


1 St. Matt. 25 : 31-46. 


265 


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garment of love. For this is the nature of God’s 
kingdom: a selfish religion absolutely unfits a 
man from entering or enjoying it. Its gate is 
so strait that a man cannot pass through it if 
he desires and tries to come alone; but if he 
will bring others with him, it is wide enough 
and to spare. 

“ Who seeks for heaven alone to save his soul , 

May keep the path y but will not reach the goal; 
While he who walks in love may wander far , 

Yet God will bring him where the blessed are .” 

How wonderfully all this comes out in the 
intercessory prayer of Christ at the last supper . 1 
That prayer is the last and highest utterance of 
the love wherewith Christ, having loved his 
own which were in the world, loved them unto 
the end. He prays for his chosen ones: “I 
pray for them: I pray not for the world but for 
those whom thou hast given me.” “Holy 
Father, keep them in thy name which thou 
hast given me, that they may be one even as 
we are. For their sakes I consecrate myself, 
that they themselves also may be consecrated 
in truth. Neither for these only do I pray, 
but for them also that believe on me through 
their word; that they may all be one, even 
as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that 

1 St. John 17. 

266 


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they also may be in us; that the world may 
believe that thou didst send me.” How the 
prayer rises, like some celestial music, through 
all the interwoven notes of different fellow- 
ships, the fellowship of the Father with the 
Son, the fellowship of the Master with the dis- 
ciples, the fellowship of the disciples with each 
other, until at last it strikes the grand chord 
of universal love. Not for the world Christ 
prays, but for the disciples in the world, in order 
that they may pray for the world, and serve 
the world, and draw the world to faith in him. 
And so, in truth, while he prays thus for his 
disciples, he does pray for the whole world. 
Circle beyond circle, orb beyond orb, like waves 
upon water, like light from the sun, the prayer, 
the faith, the consecrating power spread from 
that upper room until they embrace all man- 
kind in the sweep of the divine intercession. 
The special, personal, elective love of Christ 
for his own is not exclusive; it is magnificently 
and illimitably inclusive. He loved his disciples 
into loving their fellow-men. He lifted them 
into union with God; but he did not lift them 
out of union with the world; and every tie that 
bound them to humanity, every friendship, 
every fellowship, every link of human inter- 
course, was to be a channel for the grace of 
267 


SERVICE 

God that bringeth salvation, that it might ap- 
pear to all men . 1 

This is Christ’s ideal: a radiating gospel: 
a kingdom of overflowing, conquering love; a 
church that is elected to be a means of blessing 
to the human race. This ideal is the very nerve 
of Christian missions, at home and abroad, the 
effort to preach the gospel to every creature, 
not merely because the world needs to receive 
it, but because the Church will be rejected and 
lost unless she gives it. ’Tis not so much a 
question for us whether any of our fellow-men 
oan be saved without Christianity. The ques- 
tion is whether we can be saved if we are willing 
to keep our Christianity to ourselves. And 
the answer is. No ! The only religion that can 
really do anything for me is the religion that 
makes me want to do something for you. The 
missionary enterprise is not the Church’s after- 
thought. It is Christ’s forethought. It is not 
secondary and optional. It is primary and 
vital. Christ has put it into the very heart of. 
his gospel. We cannot really see him, or know 
him, or love him, unless we see and know and 
love his ideal for us, the ideal which is embodied 
in the law of election to service. 

For this reason the spirit of missions has 

1 Titus 2 : 11. 

268 


SERVICE 


always been the saving and purifying power 
of the Christian brotherhood. Whenever and 
wherever this ideal has shone clear and strong, 
it has revealed the figure of the Christ more 
simply and more brightly to his disciples, and 
guided their feet more closely in the way of 
peace and joy and love. 

In the first century it was the spirit of for- 
eign missions that saved the Church from the 
bondage of Jewish formalism. Paul and his 
companions could not live without telling the 
world that Christ Jesus came to seek and save 
the lost — lost nations as well as lost souls. The 
heat of that desire burned up the fetters of 
bigotry like ropes of straw. The gospel could 
not be preached to all men as a form of Judaism. 
But the gospel must be preached to all men. 
Therefore it could not be a form of Judaism. 
The argument was irresistible. It was the mis- 
sionary spirit that made the Emancipation 
Proclamation of Christianity. 

In the dark ages the heart of religion was 
kept beating by the missionary zeal and efforts 
of such men as St. Patrick, and St. Augustine, 
and Columba and Aiden, and Boniface, and 
Anskar, who brought the gospel to our own 
fierce ancestors in the northern parts of Europe 
and wild islands of the sea. In the middle ages 
269 


SERVICE 


it was the men who founded the great mission- 
ary orders, St. Francis and St. Dominic, who 
did most to revive the faith and purify the life 
of the Church. And when the Reformation 
had lost its first high impulse, and sunken into 
the slough of dogmatism; when the Protestant 
churches had become entangled in political 
rivalries and theological controversies, while 
the hosts of philosophic infidelity and practical 
godlessness were sweeping in apparent triumph 
over Europe and America, it was the spirit of 
foreign missions that sounded the reveille to the 
Christian world, and lit the signal fire of a new 
era — an era of simpler creed, more militant 
hope, and broader love — an era of the Chris- 
tianity of Christ. The desire of preaching the 
gospel to every creature has drawn the Church 
back from her bewilderments and sophistica- 
tions closer to the simplicity that is in Christ, 
and so closer to that divine ideal of Christian 
unity in which all believers shall be one in him. 
You cannot preach a complicated gospel, an 
abstract gospel, to every creature. You cannot 
preach a gospel that is cast in an inflexible 
mould of thought, like Calvinism, or Arminian- 
ism, or Lutheranism, to every creature. It will 
not fit. But the gospel, the only gospel which 
is divine, must be preached to every creature. 

270 


SERVICE 


Therefore, these moulds and forms cannot be 
an essential part of it. And so we work our 
way back out of the tangle of human specu- 
lations towards that pure, clear, living message 
which Paul carried over from Asia to Europe, 
the good news that God is in Christ, reconcil- 
ing the world to himself. 

This is the gospel for an age of doubt, and 
for all ages wherein men sin and suffer, ques- 
tion and despair, thirst after righteousness and 
long for heaven. There are a thousand ways of 
preaching it, with lips and lives, in words and 
deeds; and all of them are good, provided only 
the preacher sets his whole manhood earnestly 
and loyally to his great task of bringing home 
the truth as it is in Jesus to the needs of his 
brother-men. The forms of Christian preach- 
ing are manifold. The spirit is one and the 
same. New illustrations and arguments and 
applications must be found for every age and 
every race. But the truth to be illuminated 
and applied is as changeless as Jesus Christ 
himself, in whose words it is uttered and in 
whose life it is incarnate, once and forever. 
The types of pulpit eloquence are as different 
as the characters and languages of men. But 
all of them are vain and worthless as sound- 
ing brass and tinkling cymbals, unless they 
271 


SERVICE 


speak directly and personally and joyfully of 
that divine love which is revealed in Christ in 
order that all who will believe in it may be saved 
from doubt and sin and selfishness in the ever- 
lasting kingdom of the loving God. 

This is the gospel which began to shine 
through the shadows of this earth at Bethlehem, 
where the Son of God became the child of 
Mary, and was manifested in perfect splendour 
on Calvary, where the Good Shepherd laid 
down his life for the sheep. For eighteen cen- 
turies this simple, personal, consistent gospel 
has been the light of the best desires and hopes 
and efforts of humanity. It is the bright star 
that shines, serene and steady, through the 
confusion of our perplexed, struggling, doubt- 
ing age. He who sees that star, sees God. He 
who follows that star, shall never perish. 

If I have failed to make this view of religion 
clear, if an imperfect utterance has beclouded 
and obscured the message, at least let this last 
word be plain, at least let nothing hide from 
your soul or from mine, this supreme saving 
truth of election to service. 

The vision of God in Christ is the greatest 
gift in the world. It binds those who receive 
it to the highest and most consecrated life. To 
behold that vision is to be one of God’s elect. 

272 


SERVICE 


But the result of that election depends upon 
the giving of ourselves to serve the world for 
Jesus’ sake. Noblesse oblige . 

Let us not miss the meaning of Christianity 
as it comes to us and claims us. We are chosen, 
we are called, not to die and be saved, but to 
live and save others. 


273 































































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BOOK II 

THE GOSPEL FOR A WORLD 
OF SIN 



I 

THE MIST AND THE GULF 

T^\OUBT is the mist that rises between man’s 
spiritual vision and the eternal truth. Sin 
is the gulf that separates man’s moral char- 
acter from the divine ideal. The mists gather, 
and thicken, and melt, and disperse. The gulf 
is always there. Ages of doubt come and go, 
in a world of sin. The pain of doubt is an evi- 
dence that man was made for faith. The shame 
of sin is an evidence that man was created for 
goodness. 

A gospel for humanity must be good news 
both for doubters and for sinners. The depth 
of its sympathy will always be the measure of 
its power. It must not condemn doubt as if 
it were a sin: neither must it deny sin as if it 
were merely an illusion of doubt. To doubting 
men and to sinful men it must speak the mes- 
sage of a divine love, — a revealing love that 
pierces the mist with rays of light and brings 
clearness and joy to the confused and dark- 
ened spirit, — a redeeming love that bridges the 
277 


THE MIST AND THE GULF 


gulf of separation and leads the guilty conscience 
back into peace and harmony with God. 

An age of doubt is a transient phase of a sin- 
ful world. Through such an age I think we 
have been passing, in the latter half of the nine- 
teenth century. Of the intellectual causes 
which have led to this increase of doubt; of 
the qualities which characterize it, — qualities 
for the most part sympathetic and hopeful, — 
its reverence for the questioned faith, its deep 
unrest and sorrow, its loyalty to ethical ideals; 
and of the gospel which it needs, the gospel of 
the personal Christ clearly revealing the reality 
and fatherhood of God, the liberty and respon- 
sibility of man, and the immortality of the soul, 
— of these things I have written in the first 
part of this volume. 

But such a presentation of the gospel, from 
the point of view of a particular age, and with 
the purpose of meeting certain intellectual needs, 
certain urgent questionings of the human spirit, 
could not be (and indeed it was not intended 
to be) complete and sufficient. Man has other 
needs than those of the intellect. After the 
question of the reality of God is answered, then 
remains the question of our personal relation 
to him. 


278 


THE MIST AND THE GULF 


The age of doubt is already passing, and we 
are entering, if the signs of the times fail not, 
upon a new era of faith. 

There is a renaissance of religion. Spiritual 
instincts and cravings assert themselves and 
demand their rights. The loftier aspirations, 
the larger hopes of mankind, are leading the 
new generation forward into the twentieth 
century as men who advance to a noble conflict 
and a glorious triumph, under the captaincy 
of the Christ that was and is to be. The edu- 
cated youth of to-day are turning with a 
mighty, world-wide movement towards the ban- 
ner of a militant, expectant Christianity. The 
discoveries of science, once deemed hostile 
and threatening to religion, are in process of 
swift transformation into the materials of a 
new defence of the faith. The achievements 
of commerce and social organization have made 
new and broad highways around the world for 
the onward march of the believing host. Al- 
ready we can discern the brightness of another 
great age of faith. 

But an age of faith, when the mist of doubt 
is dissolved and driven away, is always the 
time when the gulf of sin is most clearly visible. 

The souls that are most sure of the reality 
of God and the future life are always those 
279 


THE MIST AND THE GULF 


that feel most deeply their separation from him 
and their guilt in his sight. The evil that is 
in their own hearts presses upon them more 
heavily, the more vividly they realize the ac- 
tual existence of the spiritual realm and its 
eternal significance. The evil that is in the 
world does not disappear nor change through 
all the coming and going, the darkening and 
dissolving of human doubts in regard to its 
origin, nature, and meaning. It remains an 
unalterable fact in human experience. The 
interpretation which religious faith gives to it 
intensifies the necessity of a divine salvation 
from it. 

Those who have accepted the gospel for an 
age of doubt are those who feel most keenly the 
need of the gospel for a world of sin. 

There cannot be two gospels. I do not be- 
lieve that there is any essential difference or 
contradiction between the message which Chris- 
tianity has for one age and that which it has 
for another. It is always the good tidings of 
the personal Christ, the revealer of God and 
the Saviour of men. To those who are doubt- 
ful and confused, to those who have lost the 
sense of spiritual things, the divine voice says, 
“This is my beloved Son; hear him.” 1 

1 St. Luke 9 : 35. 

280 


THE MIST AND THE GULF 


To those who are sinful and sorrowful, upon 
whom the sense of evil rests like an intolerable 
burden, the voice says, “ Behold the Lamb of 
God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” 1 

These two elements of the gospel are inter- 
woven and inseparable. Christ could not take 
away the sin of the world unless he were the 
Son of God. Christ would not be the divine 
Saviour unless he took away the sin of the 
world. 

In trying to set forth the personal Christ as 
God’s answer to the doubts and questionings 
of this age, I could not help speaking of him 
as the deliverer from sin. Nor will it be pos- 
sible to present his sacrifice on the cross as 
the world’s redemption without confessing a 
constant faith in him as God manifest in the 
flesh. 

Indeed, this second book is written chiefly 
because I feel the need of a fuller utterance 
to complete the message of the former book. 
I would have the two books stand together 
and interpret each other. They are but win- 
dows looking towards Christ from two differ- 
ent points of view. 

The message of the first book was this: Christ 
saves us from doubt, because he is the incarna- 
tion of God. 

1 St. John 1:29. 

281 


THE MIST AND THE GULF 


The message of the second book is this: 
Christ is the revelation of God, because he saves 
us from sin. 

The gospel for a world of sin cannot be 
preached by any except those who need it for 
themselves. An angel could not deliver it 
aright. Its language is always in the first per- 
son plural, drawing the speaker and the hearers 
into a brotherhood of penitence and forgive- 
ness. 

“God commendeth his love towards us , in 
that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died 
for us” 1 

Christ himself did not come to preach this 
gospel. 

He came to live it. 

It was when the Apostles Peter and Paul 
and John had seen him delivered for their of- 
fences and raised again for their justification 
that they began to understand and preach this 
gospel for a world of sin. Ever since it has 
had but one message. 

6 'Through his name whosoever believeth in him 
shall receive remission of sins." 2 

“ God was in Christ reconciling the world unto 
himself .” 3 


1 Romans 5 : 8. 


2 Acts 10 : 43. 

282 


2 2 Cor. 2 : 19. 


THE MIST AND THE GULF 

“7/ any man sin , we have an advocate with the 
Father , Jesus Christ the righteous : and he is the 
; propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only,, 
but also for the sins of the whole world” 1 

1 1 John 2 : 1, 2. 


283 


II 

THE SIN OF THE WORLD 


^PHE sins of the world are many. The sin 
A of the world is one. 

It is like the grass of the field. Below the 
separate shoots and blades, which stand up in- 
dividual and distinct, as if each one grew by 
itself, there is a network of branching roots 
and fibres, knotted together, interwoven, tena- 
cious, spreading far, and propagating itself 
more swiftly the more it is cut and divided. 
The separation is on the surface. The unity 
is underground. 

But before we can have any idea of what sin 
means, either separately in the individual or 
collectively in the race, we must give some 
thought to the problem of evil, starting not 
from the point of view of philosophy, but from 
the point of view of experience. 

I 

THE PRESENCE OF EVIL 

Beneath all the particular forms of evil that 
exist in the world, men have always recognized 
284 


THE SIN OF THE WORLD 


a common ground of evil in human nature. 
Something has happened to the race, some- 
thing has entered into it and taken posses- 
sion of its vital powers, which makes it bring 
forth bad fruit. This is not a theory. It is a 
fact. 

The experience of mankind, thus far, is a 
mass of cumulative evidence that there is a 
radical twist in humanity which runs through 
it from top to bottom, and produces crooked 
results in every sphere of human life. So far 
as we can judge by our own experience, and 
by observation of others, every child of man 
who comes to moral consciousness, comes not 
only with a freedom of will which makes the 
choice of evil possible, but also with a pro- 
pensity which makes such a choice easy. This 
probability is so strong that we always reckon 
with it, in dealing with ourselves or with others. 

No man gets fairly started in the journey of 
life without knowing that he has a tendency to 
go wrong. It is the folly of the fool that he 
forgets it. The wise man remembers, fears, 
and tries to guard against it. 

Human society is organized around two facts : 
the desire of good and the recognition of evil. 
Every institution in the world which is of any 
value has in it a defensive, corrective, punitory 
285 


THE SIN OF THE WORLD 


side, which is an unconscious confession that 
mankind is prone to do wrong. Men take this 
for granted in all the relations of life. Whether 
they are making systems of education or of 
government, whether they are devising enter- 
prises to increase their property, or laws to 
protect it, or wills to distribute it, they always 
take into account the fact that there is a strain 
of evil running through all humanity. 

The advance of modern science and philos- 
ophy has not reduced or weakened the evidence 
of this common ground of evil in the world. 
On the contrary, it has done much to deepen 
and intensify the conviction that there is a rad- 
ical twist in human nature. The easy-going 
and superficial optimism of the eighteenth cen- 
tury is thoroughly discredited and obsolete. 
Men have turned away from Rousseau’s skin- 
deep philosophy of the “ original goodness and 
unlimited perfectibility” of human nature, to 
the profounder view of the Hebrew prophets, 
the Greek dramatists, Dante’s Divine Comedy , 
Shakespeare’s Hamlet , Tennyson’s Idylls of the 
King , the great poetry of all lands and ages, 
— the clearer, deeper, sadder view, which sees 
the mysterious shadow resting on the life of 
man, and traces the lines of conflict, disaster, 
and death that run through human history, 
286 


THE SIN OF THE WORLD 


back to their origin in the separation of man’s 
moral character from the divine ideal. 

Science, with its new theory of evolution, 
puts a stern emphasis upon the strength of the 
ties which bind man to the brute. It lays bare 
the workings of the selfish, sensual, egotistical 
impulses in the career of the race. It lengthens 
the cords and strengthens the stakes of the 
fatal net of heredity which holds all men to- 
gether in an entanglement of defects of nature 
and taints of blood. 

“I know of no study,” wrote Professor Hux- 
ley, “ which is so unutterably saddening as that 
of the evolution of humanity as set forth in 
the annals of history. Out of the darkness of 
prehistoric ages man emerges with the marks 
of his lowly origin strong upon him. He is a 
brute, only more intelligent than the other 
brutes; a blind prey to impulses which as often 
as not lead him to destruction; a victim to end- 
less illusions which make his mental existence 
a terror and a burden, and fill his physical life 
with barren toil and battle. He attains a cer- 
tain degree of comfort, and develops a more 
or less workable theory of life in such favour- 
able situations as the plains of Mesopotamia or 
of Egypt, and then for thousands and thousands 
of years struggles with various fortunes, at- 
287 


THE SIN OF THE WORLD 


tended by infinite wickedness, bloodshed, and 
misery, to maintain himself at this point against 
the greed and ambition of his fellow-men. He 
makes a point of killing and otherwise perse- 
cuting all those who first try to get him to move 
on; and when he has moved a step farther he 
foolishly confers post-mortem deification on his 
victims. He exactly repeats the process with 
all who want to move a step yet farther.” 

This was written by a teacher of science, for 
a periodical called The Nineteenth Century. If 
it had been uttered by a Hebrew prophet, in 
the sixth century before Christ, it could not 
give a darker picture of human nature. 

Modem philosophy is permeated with the 
flavour of pessimism, — the bitter tincture drawn 
from the twisted, tangled roots of sorrowful 
perversity which underlie the life of man. 

Modern literature is haunted by the per- 
sistent spectre of evil, which “will not down.” 
A novel by Zola, or Turgenieff, or Thomas 
Hardy, is little more than a commentary on 
Jeremiah’s text, “The heart is deceitful above 
all things, and desperately wicked.” 1 

Gloomy as such a view of life is, unmitigated 
by any real explanation of its mysterious ail- 
ment, unillumined by any hope of its cure, 

1 Jer. 17 : 9. 

288 


THE SIN OF THE WORLD 


there is still something wholesome and medici- 
nal in it. It is better to know the saddest truth 
than to be blinded by the merriest lie. The 
sober, stern-browed pessimism which looks the 
darkness in the face is sounder and more heroic 
than the frivolous, fat-witted optimism which 
turns its back, and shuts its eyes, and laughs. 

Man, indeed, is framed to live and rise by 
hope. But a hope which begins by denying 
the facts is a false hope whose path leads up- 
ward — a few steps — to the edge of a precipice 
of deeper despair. 

The Bridge-Builders in Rudyard Kipling’s 
story would have been fools if they had tried 
to accomplish their work by ignoring the steady 
downward thrust of gravitation, or shutting their 
eyes to the destructive rage of the Ganges-flood. 

No less foolish is the man who tries to build 
a life, or a theory of life, in forgetfulness of the 
steady downward thrust of human nature, or in 
denial of the reality and universality of the evil 
that is in the world. 

Hidden, dormant it may be; unrealized it 
may be in the fulness of its possibilities and 
powers. The river sleeps in the smoothness of 
its flow. The force that draws all foreheads 
downward to the dust is checked and counter- 
vailed by other forces. But evil is always there, 
289 


THE SIN OF THE WORLD 


a potency of disaster and destruction. All the 
ills that have been wrought in the world come 
from that secret source. In form they are mani- 
fold. In origin and essence they are one. 

II 

THE UNANSWERABLE QUESTION 

How came evil into being ? 

This is the question which man has always 
asked, and to which he has never found a per- 
fect answer. 

He cannot help asking it, because curiosity, 
in the nobler sense of the word, is the main- 
spring of his mind. He cannot find the perfect 
answer, because his reason is limited and con- 
ditioned, and because his intellectual power it- 
self has developed under the shadow, and with- 
in the sphere, of the very malign presence which 
he seeks to account for. 

A spirit whose life was beyond the influence 
of evil might be able to understand and solve 
the problem of its origin. But even so, it would 
hardly be possible for such a spirit to com- 
municate this knowledge to other spirits who 
were born and lived within the domain of evil. 

And yet, that man should ask this question, 
and continue to ask it after thousands of years 
290 


THE SIN OF THE WORLD 


of baffled thought and disappointed search, is 
in itself a hopeful and illuminating fact. It 
is a question which implies a faith not to be 
eradicated, a courage not to be conquered. It 
speaks of a conviction that evil is not eternal, 
but temporal; not sovereign, but subordinate; 
not native to the universe, but a foreigner and 
an intruder. It testifies to man’s knowledge 
that evil is not the whole, but a part; not the 
straight line, but the deflection; not a neces- 
sary element in the perfect harmony of being, 
but a false note which breaks the chord. 

If man should ask, “How came good into 
being?” he would be in the region of despair. 
While he continues to ask, “How came evil 
into being?” he is in the region of hope. 

All the answers to this question which have 
been attempted, may be classified under three 
forms. The first amounts to a denial of the 
existence of evil. The second destroys the real- 
ity of the distinction between evil and good. 
The third confesses that the primal origin of 
evil is a mystery, and bids us seek a knowledge 
of its reality and its mode of manifestation in 
the world. 

All theories which are based upon the idea of 
the essential nothingness of evil, amount to a 
291 


THE SIN OF THE WORLD 


practical denial of its existence. Traces of 
such theories may be found even in Christian 
writers. A theologian as orthodox as Thomas 
Aquinas has said, “God created everything that 
exists; but sin is nothing ; so God was not the 
author of it.” In Robert Browning’s poem of 
“Abt Vogler,” the idea is put into a single verse. 

“ The evil is naughty is null , is silence implying sound” 

Darkness is but the absence of light. Evil is 
but the negation of good. 

The rock upon which all these negative 
theories go to pieces is the practical convic- 
tion that evil is just as real to us in our experi- 
ence, just as solid, just as operative, as good 
is. The desire which seeks a wrong pleasure 
is no less vivid than that which seeks a right 
pleasure. The will which determines a wicked 
action is just as strong as that which determines 
a righteous action. The end sought is no more 
negative in one case than it is in the other. If 
evil is a nothing, it is a strangely active, posi- 
tive, and potent nothing, with all the qualities 
of a something. The theories which attempt 
to account for its origin by tracing it to a mere 
negation or absence of good, raise a harder 
question than that which they attempt to an- 
swer. Instead of asking how evil came into 
292 


THE SIN OF THE WORLD 


being, we must ask, How did evil, if it is a 
mere nothing, come to have the reality, the 
life, and the power of a something ? 

All theories which are based upon the idea of 
the necessity of evil lead to a practical denial 
of the distinction between evil and good. For 
if the necessity be purely natural, that is to 
say materialistic, then there is no possible 
ground for making such a distinction. The 
inexplicable constitution of the original atoms 
of the universe has produced mother’s love and 
murderer’s hate in precisely the same way, and 
the one is as good as the other. But if the neces- 
sity be ordained by any kind of a Divine Being, 
then all its results must be according to his will 
and must serve his purpose. Any essential 
difference between the evil and the good be- 
comes unimaginable. All that is left is a formal 
difference, in which evil is good in disguise, a 
necessary but unrecognized element in the de- 
velopment of the world. We must accept the 
statement of Pope’s Essay on Man : 

“All nature is but art , unknown to thee; 

All chance , direction which thou canst not see; 

All discord , harmony not understood ; 

All partial evil , universal good ; 

And spite of pride , in erring reason's spite , 

One truth is clear , Whatever is, is right." 

293 


THE SIN OF THE WORLD 


The rock upon which these theories of the 
necessity of evil go to pieces is the practical 
knowledge of the nature of evil, which comes 
to us through the same moral sense which makes 
us aware of its existence. There is absolutely 
no variation in the testimony of human con- 
sciousness on this point. Evil is recognized 
not merely as something which is, but also as 
something which “ought not to be.” This is 
the mark by which we know it. If from this 
mark we set out to trace its origin to a divine 
necessity which has ordained it and called it 
into being to serve a good purpose, then we 
must admit that our original mark of evil is 
an illusion, a false label. It is not “that which 
ought not to be.” It is “that which had to 
be.” The whole problem of the origin of evil 
dissolves into an absurdity. We are left to face 
a still harder question. How did our moral 
consciousness, with such an error at the very 
heart of it, come into being? Is it a mistake? 
Or is it a lie? Or is it perhaps a divinely im- 
posed delusion ? 

But if our common sense turns away from 
these theories of evil as originating in nothing- 
ness, or in necessity, in what direction shall we 
look for an answer to the question of how it 
came into being? There is only one line left 
294 


THE SIN OF THE WORLD 


open; and that is the line of the facts as they 
lie before us in the world of experience. 

What, then, are the facts of evil recognized 
by the moral sense of mankind? First of all, 
that it is “that which ought not to be.” Then, 
that it actually is. Then, that it manifests 
itself in our own experience in connection with 
voluntary acts, — acts of choice, or acts of com- 
pliance, — contrary to “that which ought to 
be.” But “that which ought to be,” must be 
the will of God. Therefore “that which ought 
not to be,” can only make itself known in the 
world through the will of a creature capable of 
going contrary to God. The possibility of evil 
depends upon the liberty of the created will. 
Liberty, then, which means the power of con- 
trary choice, must be the door through which 
evil entered the world. 

But what lies behind that door? From what 
secret region does the evil that passes through 
it draw its birth and its power? Why does it 
enter in? Why does God permit it? Here 
we stand face to face with the mystery. 

Certainly God as creator must have bestowed 
the gift of liberty with a good purpose. He 
must have intended man to choose the good in 
order to attain real and permanent freedom; 
that is, the power of self-realization in harmony 
295 


THE SIN OF THE WORLD 


with the ideal of his nature. But when evil 
comes in through liberty, the purpose of liberty 
is violated, the very end of its being is frus- 
trated. The will, choosing evil, comes into 
subjection to it, and cannot realize itself in a 
lasting freedom of concord with good. 

Evil, then, as it manifests itself in the world, 
is a purposeless, aimless thing. It is an abuse 
of the power of choice. It is caprice. It is vio- 
lence to reason. We can give no rational ex- 
planation of its origin, because its origin appears 
irrational. It is incomprehensible. There is a 
madness about it which confuses the mind. The 
Greeks took refuge from it in their myth of 
Ate, “the eldest daughter of Zeus, the power 
of bane, who blindeth all.” But this was only 
a shift of desperate ignorance to get rid of the 
difficulty by transferring it from the human 
to the divine. 

A wiser, humbler, more reverent thought 
holds fast to the conviction that wherever the 
madness of evil comes from, it does not come 
from God. Its origin is beyond our ken. “Evil 
is the inscrutable mystery of the world; it ever 
remains, in its inmost depths, impenetrable 
darkness.” It is not to be comprehended in 
its cause. It is to be known in its effects, which 
are symptoms of its nature. 

296 


THE SIN OF THE WORLD 

This is the point to which our line leads us, 
and here it leaves us. To go farther is to aban- 
don fact for fancy. Christianity itself does 
not profess to give us light beyond this point. 
It presents no doctrine of the origin of evil. 
It tells us only how it came into the world, 
and what it means in the life of man. Where 
it came from is unrevealed. 

There are two places in the Bible where the 
entrance of evil and the fall of man are de- 
scribed — and they both teach the same lesson. 
Christ’s parable of the Prodigal Son 1 is just as 
true, just as significant, as the poem of Adam’s 
lost Paradise . 2 In both stories the birthplace 
of the evil is hidden. The serpent that tempted 
Eve, and the far country that allured the Prodi- 
gal, are symbols of a mystery. In both stories 
the entrance of the evil is through self-will — 
blind, perverse, ruinous, but free, and therefore 
responsible. In both stories the nature of the 
evil is rebellion, self-injury, separation from 
God. In both stories the result of the evil in 
man’s heart is the sense of sin. 

Adam’s story stops there; but the Prodigal’s 
story goes on to salvation. 

1 St. Luke 15. 2 Gen. 3. . 


297 


THE SIN OF THE WORLD 
III 

THE SENSE OF SIN 

The sense of sin is deeper than the conscious- 
ness of evil. Evil is a broad, vague word. It 
covers all that ought not to be, but it does not 
make clear the nature of the “ought not.” It 
is a general description of that which prevents 
perfection, destroys happiness, produces dis- 
cord and misery. 

Sin is a precise, sharp word. It translates 
the idea of evil from the language of philosophy 
into the language of religion. It defines the 
nature of the “ought not” as opposed to a di- 
vine law. It recognizes the presence and the 
guilt of a contrary will in disobedience to that 
law. 

The consciousness of evil is universal. There 
is a feeling of conflict, of disorder, of moral 
perturbation and unrest, diffused through hu- 
manity. This is the great mark of division 
between the life of man and the life of nature. 
Emerson has described it in his poem of “The 
Sphinx.” Nature is harmonious, joyful, uncon- 
scious of strife between the real and the ideal. 

“ But man crouches and blushes , 

Absconds and conceals ; 

He creepeth and peepeth , 

298 


THE SIN OF THE WORLD 


He palters and steals; 

Infirm , melancholy , 

Jealous glancing around , 

An oaf , an accomplice , 

He poisons the ground . 

spofce the great mother , 

Beholding his fear ; — 

^ the sound of her accents 
Cold shuddered the sphere; 

* Who has drugged my boy’s cup ? 

Who has mixed my boy’s bread? 

Who , sadness and madness , 

ZZas turned my child’s head?’ ” 

This mysterious unrest, this vague trouble, 
is an utterance of man’s consciousness that he 
belongs to another world from that which is 
ruled by mere necessity. It is an instinctive 
confession that beyond the power of control, 
to which all physical life is subject, he feels a 
power of command, to which his spiritual life 
ought to be subject. This power of command 
makes itself known to him through conscience, 
which is the power of perceiving the difference 
between the “ought to be” and the “ought 
not to be.” 

“Whom do you count the worst man upon 
earth?” says Robert Browning in “Christmas 
Eve.” 


299 


THE SIN OF THE WORLD 


“Be sure that he knows , in his conscience , more 
Of what right is, than arises at birth 
In the best mans acts that we bow before : 

This last knows better — true, but my fact is, 

9 Tis one thing to know, and another to practise .” 

This contrast between knowledge and prac- 
tice is the root of the consciousness of evil, 
whose symptoms are unrest, shame, and fear. 

“ Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all ” 

It is a feeling of resistance to a moral pres- 
sure, of disobedience to a commanding power, 
of discord with a dim ideal. But it is also a 
sense of compliance with an inward impulse, 
of obedience to a native desire, of agreement 
with a secret passion. 

It is not altogether dark. It could not exist 
in a world where there was nothing but evil. 
In a universe wholly material there could be 
no materialism. In a race utterly and totally 
evil there could be no consciousness of evil. 

Neither could it exist in a world where sepa- 
rate evils stood alone and had no common 
ground in human nature. Each misdeed would 
then be a miracle. It would be a rootless, un- 
recognizable, nameless thing. Conscience per- 
ceives evil not only in its individuality, but 
also in its solidarity. When a man does wrong 
300 


THE SIN OF THE WORLD 


he feels that he is a partner in a great con- 
spiracy, a sharer, by choice or by compliance, 
in a widespread rebellion. 

There is in man,” wrote Frederic Amiel in 
his diary, “an instinct of revolt, an enemy of 
all law, a rebel which will stoop to no yoke, not 
even that of reason, duty, and wisdom. This 
element in us is the root of all sin — das radicale 
Bose of Kant.” 

But this feeling of radical evil and of its pres- 
ence and potency in every misdeed, needs more 
light to make its meaning clear. Evil is known 
as sin only when good is known as the will and 
command and ideal of a personal and holy God. 

This is what St. Paul teaches. Revelation 
is given to make clear the nature of the gulf 
between man as he is and man as he ought to 
be. Evil is not a step in a progress towards 
the ideal. It is a chasm which cuts us off from 
the ideal. The reason why it cuts us off is be- 
cause it is contrary to God’s will, through which 
alone the ideal can be realized. The moral law 
reveals that will to us as positive, personal, 
righteous, and immutable. The law enters 
that the offence may abound, for “by the law 
is the knowledge of sin.” 1 

The sense of sin, therefore, is a step beyond 

1 Rom. 3:20; 5:20. 

301 


THE SIN OF THE WORLD 


the consciousness of evil. And it is a step 
towards light. 

It is the interpretation of evil as an offence 
against God, a disobedience to God, a separa- 
tion from God. It comes into being only with 
Theism, the faith in a holy, wise, and right- 
eous Spirit as creator of the world. It is not 
until this light breaks upon the soul that Amiel’s 
words become true: “All men long to recover 
a lost harmony with the great order of things, 
and to feel themselves approved and blessed 
by the author of the Universe. All know what 
suffering is, and long for happiness. All know 
what sin is, and feel the need of pardon.” 

Religion must begin, then, — even if we hold 
that its ultimate aim is the deliverance of men 
from evil, — religion must begin not with a doc- 
trine of evil, but with a doctrine of God. 

Its keynote must be the first article of the 
creed, “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, 
maker of heaven and earth.” When he is hid- 
den, forgotten, denied, the gospel for an age 
of doubt must prepare the way for the gospel 
for a world of sin. Over the vague unrest, the 
inarticulate shame, the uncomprehended fear, 
of an evil world, the light of God’s love and 
God’s law must be poured. Thus only can the 
evil doer find his way to that place of penitence, 
302 


THE SIN OF THE WORLD 


where he cries, “ Against thee, thee only, have 
I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight.” 1 

The sense of sin, therefore, is not by any 
means a hopeless thing. It is an evidence of 
life, in its very pain; of enlightenment, in its 
very shame; of nearness to God, in its very 
humiliation before him. 

There is a passage in Margaret Deland’s 
Old Chester Tales that puts the truth very sim- 
ply and beautifully. A woman that was a sinner 
has come to a minister of Christ to confess her 
sin. The old man speaks to her as she kneels 
at his feet, weeping. 

“You have sinned, and suffered for your sin. 
You have asked your Heavenly Father to for- 
give you, and he has forgiven you. But still 
you suffer. Woman, be thankful that you can 
suffer. The worst trouble in the world is the 
trouble that does not know God, and so does 
not suffer. Without such knowledge there is 
no suffering. The sense of sin in the soul is 
the apprehension of Almighty God.” 

IV 

THE HOPEFUL FEAR 

Sin is not a thing to be defined. It is a thing 
to be felt. Every attempt at a definition comes 

1 Psalm 51 : 4. 

303 


THE SIN OF THE WORLD 


short of the reality. If it is insisted upon as 
the full truth, it becomes a guide to error. 
Every genuine feeling of sin throws some light 
upon the reality and helps us to perceive that 
which we can never explain. 

One of the inexplicable elements of sin is the 
connection between its root in the race and its 
fruits in the individual. We cannot explain 
how it is that each man should feel himself 
free enough to be fully responsible for his own 
evil thoughts and feelings and actions, and yet 
conscious at the same time that they are joined 
to a common ground of evil in human nature. 
Stranger still is the fact that this propensity 
to evil is felt to be not an excuse but an aggra- 
vation. The man who injures his brother in a 
fit of passion, takes no comfort in the remem- 
brance of his anger. The anger itself is part 
of his condemnation. Who ever excused a foul 
deed, to his own conscience, with the saying 
that he had a foul nature? Sin is not only an 
act: it is a condition, a state; and separate 
sins are not better, they are worse, because 
they spring from a common root. “It is of 
sin,” says Boetius, “that we do not love that 
which is best.” 

Christ taught the truth of original sin. He 
did not explain it, but he declared it when he 
304 


THE SIN OF THE WORLD 


said, “Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, 
murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false 
witness, blasphemies.” 1 Side by side with this 
truth he proclaimed the guilt of actual sin when 
he said, “Whosoever looketh on a woman to 
lust after her hath committed adultery with 
her already in his heart.” 2 He taught also that 
all men need to be delivered from both original 
and actual sin when he said, “Ye must be born 
again,” 3 and “Except ye repent ye shall all 
likewise perish .” 4 But when his disciples 
pressed him to explain this mystery of the con- 
nection between the root and the fruit of evil, 
with their question, “Lord, who did sin, this 
man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 
Christ refused to answer them. He said, 
“Neither did this man sin nor his parents” 
(that is, in relation to the point of their ques- 
tion), “but that the works of God might be 
made manifest in him.” 5 

Original sin makes originality in sins impos- 
sible. There is a fatal resemblance and rela- 
tionship in all the evils that are done under 
the sun, from the days before the flood even 
until now. 

And yet every sin originates in the heart that 

1 St. Matt. 15 : 19. 2 St. Matt. 5 : 28. 8 St. John 3 : 7. 

< St. Luke 13 : 3. 6 St. John 9 : 2, 3. 

305 


THE SIN OF THE WORLD 


commits it. Each individual will that consents 
to evil chooses for itself. The ground of this 
choice is hidden in darkness. It may lie in a 
region beyond the sphere of time and space, 
an antenatal state. But the operation of this 
choice is manifest in the light. Every sin is a 
fall of man. 

To be really conscious of a single sin is to 
feel its secret connections and infinite possibili- 
ties. It is to catch sight of the bottomless gulf 
and have a sense of the immeasurable peril of 
walking beside it with unguarded feet. 

In Goethe’s Confessions of a Beautiful Soul 
there is a singular and searching passage which 
goes very deep into human experience. 

“For more than a year,” — so runs the con- 
fession, — “I was forced to feel that if an unseen 
Hand had not protected me, I might have be- 
come a Girard, a Cartouche, a Damiens, or 
almost any moral monster that one can name. 
I felt the predisposition to it in my heart. God, 
what a discovery ! ” 

John Bunyan’s exclamation, when he looked 
from his window at a condemned malefactor 
going to execution, — “There goes John Bun- 
yan, but for the grace of God,” — has found an 
echo in many a heart. But this echo is not a 
defence; it is a confession. 

306 


THE SIN OF THE WORLD 

The sense of sin covers character as well as 
deeds. It clings not only to what we have done, 
but also to what we are prone to do. It was in 
this region below the surface that Jesus touched 
and exposed it, with his searching tenderness, 
his holy insight, his relentless love. Not only 
his word, piercing like an arrow of light to the 
roots of evil in pride and selfishness and lust 
and greed and hypocrisy, but also his life in 
its stainless purity and flawless truth, was an 
infallible detective of the furtive evil seeking 
to hide itself, like Adam and Eve in the poem 
of Eden, among the trees of the garden. It 
was for this reason that the scribes and Phari- 
sees hated him, because he made them hate 
themselves. It was for this reason that Peter 
feared to be with him, and cried, “Depart from 
me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” 1 It was 
for this reason that the woman of the city streets 
drew close to him, and bathed his feet with her 
tears, because she knew that he knew that she 
was a sinner . 2 

There are four elements in a true sense of 
sin: shame, pain, fear, and hope. 

The shame comes from its ugliness, its defile- 
ment, its marring and mocking of those ele- 
ments in us which we feel belong to the divine 

1 St. Luke 5:8. 2 St. Luke 7 : 38. 

307 


THE SIN OF THE WORLD 


image and our better nature. No man is born 
without an ideal. 

“ Take all in a word : the truth in God's breast , 

Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed : 

Though he is so bright , and we so dim , 

We are made in his image to witness him ' 9 

The failure to be true to this ideal, the be- 
fouling and breaking of this image, is the shame 
of sin. 

The pain comes from its enslaving and im- 
prisoning power. Man was made for liberty. 
But sin is bondage to evil. “ Whoso committeth 
sin is the servant of sin.” 1 The conflict within 
our members, the law of the flesh warring 
against the law of the spirit, the weight of the 
chains of evil habit, the tyranny of sensual 
lusts and passions, — these make the misery of 
human life. Stevenson’s parable of Dr. Jekyll 
and Mr. Hyde is a commentary on the seventh 
chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. 

“ The gods are just , and of our pleasant vices 
Make instruments to plague us." 

“Crime and punishment,” says Emerson, 
“grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit 
that, unsuspected, ripens within the flower that 
concealed it.” 

1 St. John 8 : 34. 

308 


THE SIN OF THE WORLD 


The fear comes from the sense of disobedi- 
ence to a high, mysterious, inexorable com- 
mand. It is not possible to feel sin without 
fear, except by denying the existence of all 
moral law. As a matter of fact, the conscious- 
ness of evil has always carried with it in all 
human experience a feeling of secret appre- 
hension, a troubled expectation and dread of 
punishment. Fear is related to guilt as per- 
sonality is related to law. The reality of the 
one relation carries with it the reality of the 
other. Here we come face to face with a crucial 
question in religion. 

Is there anything objective and actual which 
corresponds to this human element of fear in 
the sense of sin? Is there anything for sinful 
man to be afraid of? 

Certainly there must be, unless the whole 
testimony of our moral nature is an illusion. 
The condemnation of sin rests not merely upon 
the feeling that sin is self-injury, self-mutila- 
tion, but upon the deeper sense that it is an 
offence against a law outside of us, and above 
us, and justly sovereign over us. Such a law 
must have within itself the right, the power, 
the inexorable necessity of punishment. Rest- 
ing upon the will, and expressing the character 
of a righteous God, the ruler of the universe, 
309 


THE SIN OF THE WORLD 


it implies in him a holy indignation against all 
that breaks and dishonours it. 

“For consider,” says one of the greatest 
preachers whose voice has been heard in the 
nineteenth century, “sin violates and defies 
the Moral Law of God. And what is God’s 
Moral Law? Is it a law which, like the laws 
of nature, as we call them, might conceivably 
have been other than it is? Certainly not. 
We can conceive much in nature being very 
different from what it is — suns and stars mov- 
ing in smaller cycles; men and animals in dif- 
ferent shapes; the chemistry, the geology, the 
governing rules of the material universe, quite 
unlike what they actually are. God’s liberty 
in creating physical beings was in no way limited 
by his own laws, whether of force or of matter. 
But can we, if we believe in a Moral God, con- 
ceive him saying, ‘Thou mayest lie,’ ‘Thou 
mayest do murder’? . . . The Moral Law is 
not a code which he might have made other 
than it is; it is his own Moral Nature, thrown 
into a shape which makes it intelligible and 
applicable to us his creatures; and therefore 
in violating it we are opposing, not something 
which he has made, but might have made other- 
wise, like the laws of nature, — but himself. 
Sin, if it could, would destroy God.” 

310 


THE SIN OF THE WORLD 


The penalty of sin under moral law is not 
less certain, but more certain, than the penalty 
of disobedience to natural law. The whole- 
some fear which makes a burnt child dread the 
fire is trustworthy in the same way as the salu- 
tary fear which makes a sinful man dread the 
divine indignation. Both are premonitions of an 
actual peril, safeguards against a real danger. 
But the latter, if Christ knew the truth, is far 
more needful, far more terrible. For he said: 
“Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and 
after that have no more that they can do. But 
I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear 
him, which after he hath killed, hath power to 
cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, fear him.” 1 
And this he said, not unto his enemies to terrify 
them, but unto his friends to warn and save 
them. 

The fear that lurks in sin is not an illusion. 
It is an admonition. It corresponds to some- 
thing real outside of us. And that something 
is the reality which religion calls “the wrath 
of God.” 

It is inconceivable that this holy wrath should 
be perfectly comprehended or explained by us. 
It is equally inconceivable that it should be 
doubted or denied. A righteous judge incapa- 

1 St. Luke 12 : 5. 

311 


THE SIN OF THE WORLD 


ble of indignation against crime would be unfit 
to sit in the seat of justice. A holy God in- 
capable of wrath against sin would be disquali- 
fied to rule the world. 

There must be a moral necessity in God which 
calls for the condemnation of evil as sin. This 
necessity comes from every side of his nature, 
— from his justice first, but also from his purity, 
his wisdom, his goodness, his love. And the 
condemnation expresses every side of his rela- 
tion to the world. As Creator, he disapproves 
the marring of the ideal. As Judge, he con- 
demns the transgression of the law. As Lord, 
he resents and reproves treason and rebellion 
against his government. As Father, he is 
wounded and offended by ingratitude against 
his love and separation from his fellowship. 
All these holy perfections are included and im- 
plied in that mysterious reality of which the 
Scripture speaks as “the wrath of God, coming 
upon the children of disobedience.” 1 

But there is a form in which this truth of 
the divine wrath has been presented which 
makes it utterly hateful, and, indeed, incred- 
ible. It is the form which forgets and denies 
those perfections of God out of which his in- 
dignation proceeds. It is the form which in- 

1 Eph. 5 : 6. 

312 


THE SIN OF THE WORLD 


troduces sin itself into the very heart of God’s 
feeling against sin. It is the form which makes 
him fierce, vindictive, implacable, and cruel. 

To defame and dishonour the divine wrath 
is worse than to doubt or deny it. To separate 
God’s indignation against sin from his love 
towards man is to blaspheme his name. 

This is the fault of which, alas, human theol- 
ogy has too often been guilty, — a fault which 
has brought its own deep punishment in the 
revolt of human nature against the hideous mis- 
representation of religion. Take two examples 
of this black caricature of God’s feeling towards 
sin, from the writings of Robert South, one of 
the eloquent preachers of the seventeenth cen- 
tury. 

“The same relation of a Creator that endears 
God to the innocent, fires him against a sinner. 
God looks upon the soul as Amnon did upon 
Tamar: while it was a virgin he loved it; but 
now it is deflowered he hates it.” 

“A physician has a servant; while this ser- 
vant lives honestly with him he is fit to be used 
and to be employed in his occasions; but if 
this servant should commit a felony and for 
that be condemned, he can then be actively 
serviceable to him no longer; he is fit only for 
him to dissect, and make an object upon which 
313 


THE SIN OF THE WORLD 


to show the experiments of his skill. So while 
man was yet innocent he was fit to be used by 
God in a way of active obedience; but now 
having sinned, and being sentenced by the law 
to death as a malefactor, he is a fit matter only 
for God to torment and show the wonders of 
his vindictive justice.’ 5 

The world is to be congratulated that such 
teaching as this has become obsolete and in- 
credible. Whatever system of theology it may 
have belonged to is now as dead as Dagon. 
A God who had any resemblance in his char- 
acter to that despicable sinner, Amnon, a God 
who could use his children, even after they had 
disobeyed him, as “fit matter to torment and 
show the wonders of his vindictive justice,” 
would be a nightmare horror of moral mon- 
strosity, infinitely worse than no God at all. 
To worship such a God would be to worship 
an omnipotent devil. 

God cannot be angry, even against sin, as 
sinful men are angry, because in him there is 
no sin. Whatever his holy wrath against evil 
may mean, it certainly must be eternally con- 
sistent with his purity, his goodness, his com- 
passion, and his love. 

Therefore, the true fear which is an element 
314 


THE SIN OF THE WORLD 


in the sense of sin, — the fear which is simply 
seeing what evil is, what judgment is, what 
law is, and what punishment is, — the fear which 
is not spiritual cowardice, but an incitement to 
courage, not abject superstition, but a reason- 
able awe, — the fear which comes upon every 
sinful soul as an influence of quickening intel- 
ligence, a powerful movement of imperilled 
life, in the presence of the just and holy God,. 
— this fear carries in its heart a secret and im- 
perishable hope. 

The hope that dwells in the sense of sin ! 
Strange mystery of the deepest of all sorrows, 
— seed of light hidden in the womb of darkness, 
— indomitable testimony of the lost soul to its 
faith that some one is seeking for it in the 
wilderness ! 

Sin is the separation of man from God. 

The sense of sin is God’s unbroken hold upon 
the heart of man. 

The sacrifices on myriad altars bear witness 
to it. The prayers of penitence rising from all 
dark corners of the earth bear witness to it. 
The tremulous homeward-turnings of innumer- 
able souls from far countries of misery and 
loneliness bear witness to it. 

315 


THE SIN OF THE WORLD 

“Father, I have sinned against heaven and 
in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be 
called thy son !” 

But mark, — he still says. Father l 


\ 


S16 


THE BIBLE WITHOUT CHRIST 


rTIHE Bible, if indeed it be the true text-book 
A of religion, must contain the answer to 
man’s cry as a sinner to God as a Saviour. It 
must disclose to man a remedy for the pain, a 
consolation for the shame, a rescue from the 
fear, and a confirmation of the secret hope, that 
he dimly and confusedly feels in the sense of sin. 
A Bible with no message of deliverance from 
sin would be a useless luxury in a sinful world. 
It would lack that quality of perfect fitness to 
human need which is one of the most luminous 
evidences of a divine word. The presence of a 
clear message of salvation is an essential element 
in the proof of inspiration. 

That there is such a message of salvation in 
the Bible, no intelligent reader can deny. That 
it centres in Christ, is what this chapter is in- 
tended to show. 

Jesus himself took this view of the Scrip- 
tures. To the unbelieving Jews, who trusted 
in their sacred books but felt no need of him, 
he said, 4 'Search the Scriptures; for in these 
317 


THE BIBLE WITHOUT CHRIST 


ye think ye have eternal life: and these are they 
which testify of me.” 1 

Suppose for a moment that this were a mis- 
take. Suppose that there were no testimonies 
to Christ in the Old Testament, no promises of 
his coming, no foreshadowings of his saving 
mission and power, — only law and ritual, poetry 
and history, philosophy and prophecy. 

Suppose also that the New Testament con- 
tained nothing but the record of the moral 
teachings of Jesus and his followers, without 
reference to his life and death as a visible reve- 
lation of divine justice and mercy in personal- 
ity and action. Suppose that it had not a word 
to say about his work in relation to men as 
sinners. Suppose, in short, that it gave the 
words of Jesus about the reality and nature 
and guilt of sin, about the pain and shame and 
fear of humanity, but no revelation of him, 
no recognition of what he did and suffered, no 
view of his crucifixion and resurrection, in their 
bearing upon the sin of the world. 

Suppose the Bible without Christ. What 
hope of salvation would it contain? What 
would it be worth to us? What would be left 
of it as the divine answer to the need of a sin- 
ful world ? 

1 St. John 5 : 39. 

318 


THE BIBLE WITHOUT CHRIST 

In the Old Testament, with its partial and 
imperfect vision of the nature of evil, an un- 
broken shadow. 

In the New Testament, with its poignant 
disclosure of the secret of sin, an intolerable 
light. 

We can never realize the true meaning and 
value of this book of the world’s hope until we 
try the experiment of reading it without the 
message which makes it hopeful. How the 
Bible centres in Christ can be learned best by 
trying to take Christ out of the Bible. 

I 

THE UNBROKEN SHADOW 

The Old Testament does not begin with a 
theory of the nature of God and the origin of 
evil. It begins with a picture of creation, fol- 
lowed immediately by a picture of the entrance 
of evil into the world, and from this point it 
unrolls a graphic panorama of human life. 

Some people interpret this panorama of 
Genesis as a series of scientific diagrams. 
Others interpret it as a series of poetic illus- 
trations. It makes little difference in regard 
to their value for purposes of spiritual instruc- 
tion. Upon the whole, the vital truths by which 
319 


THE BIBLE WITHOUT CHRIST 


the souls of men live, have been conveyed in 
poetic illustrations rather more frequently and 
fully than in scientific diagrams. Dante’s Di- 
vine Comedy has taught more than Euclid’s 
Geometry . 

One thing is clear in the book of Genesis. 
By whatever method we translate its records, 
their meaning is the same. They show a vision 
of human sin, conflict, and suffering, against a 
divine background of offended love, righteous 
indignation, and just retribution. This view 
of human life corresponds very closely with 
what we know of it from other sources. 

Unruly appetite, lustful passion, envy and 
discord, violence and terror and guilt, are 
written as clearly in the story of the begin- 
nings of all tribes and nations and families, 
as in the story of Adam and Eve, Cain and 
Abel, Noah, Abraham, and Jacob. 

It is difficult to conceive how a pure and 
righteous God could look upon such a race, 
made in his own image, with dominion over 
the creatures, and with capacities of infinite 
development in wisdom and virtue and power, 
yet descending to lower depths of animalism 
than the very beasts of the field, developing 
passions more cruel and treacherous and base 
than those of the brute creation, — upon such 
320 


THE BIBLE WITHOUT CHRIST 


a race it is impossible that God should look 
without holy wrath. Not wrath as we know 
it, always tainted with selfishness, but wrath 
as only God can know it, absolutely unselfish 
and springing out of frustrated benevolence. 
The more he loves men and women, the more 
he must hate the evil which mars his image in 
their characters and defeats his design in their 
lives. 

Now take away out of these pictures which 
are given in Genesis, that one ray of light which 
flashes in the Messianic promise that the seed 
of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head , 1 
that one thread of gold which runs from this 
promise through the lives of those who believe 
in God, keeping them in touch with him, mak- 
ing them his faithful seed, because from them 
there is to come a star, a sceptre, a Shiloh unto 
whom the nation shall be gathered, 2 — take 
away that ray of light, that thread of gold, 
and what remains ? Sin and shame and struggle 
below; baffled love, frustrated benevolence, 
inevitable condemnation above. The expulsion 
from Eden — the thorn-cursed soil — the brand 
on the brow of Cain — the shattered Babel — the 
whelming flood — the fiery tempest on Sodom 
and Gomorrah — wars and disasters, tumults 

1 Gen. 3:15. 2 Gen. 49 : 10. 

321 


THE BIBLE WITHOUT CHRIST 


and captivities — man a rebellious, wretched, 
wandering creature — God justly offended at 
the violation of his law — a sin-twisted, suffer- 
ing, fearful world below — a stainless, silent 
heaven above, — and no bridge across the gulf. 

Now turn to the law given through Moses. 
His part in history was twofold. He was the 
leader of the Exodus; and that means emanci- 
pation from human tyranny. He was the ex- 
plorer of Sinai; and that means subjugation to 
divine justice. 

Moses talked with God face to face. But 
there was a frown upon the divine countenance, 
and the voice which spoke to him was as stern 
as fate. The people heard it only as the voice 
of a trumpet, mysterious and inarticulate, 
whereat they did exceedingly fear and quake, 
and entreated that it should not be spoken unto 
them any more. But Moses heard the words, 
and knew that they were inevitable and eternal. 

Ten commandments he brought down from 
the mount, written out clearly so that all men 
should understand them, and on stone so that 
they should endure to all generations. One 
of the commandments was positive. Nine of 
them were negative. 

But the point that pierces us, in this revela- 
322 


THE BIBLE WITHOUT CHRIST 


tion through Moses, is that every “Thou shalt 
not” is a disclosure of what men have done, 
and are prone to do, and would like to do again 
if they dared. The commandments sound like 
a shouting from the mountain-top of the secrets 
of many hearts. After each divine word which 
says, “Thou shalt not,” follows a human mur- 
mur which says, “But I will.” 

A Bible was once published in which, by a 
typographical error, the not was omitted from 
the seventh commandment. It was called “the 
wicked Bible.” The history of Israel, starting 
from Sinai, reads like a commentary on a wicked 
Bible with the printer’s error multiplied by ten. 
Carry the commandments through the books 
of the Judges and the Kings, and you must 
acknowledge that they compel the conclusion 
that man is what he ought not to be, and ought 
not to be what he is. 

The one bright spot in the law given by Moses 
is the commandment to make a mercy-seat in 
the Tabernacle, where the sins of the people 
may be confessed before Almighty God , 1 and 
where the blood of sacrifice, sprinkled upon 
the Ark, may symbolize an atonement between 
man and God. The one good hope which 
cheered Moses in his ministry to a disobedient 

1 Ex. 25; Lev. 16. 

323 


THE BIBLE WITHOUT CHRIST 


and gainsaying folk, was the promise that God 
would raise up a prophet from among his breth- 
ren unto whom the people should hearken . 1 
Blot out that prediction of Christ, and Moses 
stands as an embodiment of failure, — a leader 
who emancipated the nation and condemned 
the race, — the messenger of a divine law which 
was broken even while he was carrying it down 
from the burning mount. 

Turn from history and law to poetry and 
experience. In the Psalms the thunders of 
Sinai are set to music and translated into song. 
But what is that song? It is the song of the 
unattainable. It is the lyric utterance of de- 
sire and disappointment, shame and penitence. 
Those broken-hearted Psalms ! How they ring 
the changes on human frailty and suffering and 
remorse ! How sad and searching the light with 
which they are illuminated in the story of 
David’s life ! He could sing divinely, but he 
could not live as he sang. 

Sin is the shadow on genius. 

Literature full of beauty and harmony: life 
full of ugliness and discord. A book written 
with simplicity and purity and noble senti- 
ment: a writer touched with vanity and self- 

1 Deut. 18 : 15. 

324 


THE BIBLE WITHOUT CHRIST 

ishness, impurity and vengeful passion. How 
often has that strange contrast been discov- 
ered ! 

David knew his own infirmity and guilt. 
He knew the corruption and disgrace of his 
house. He laid hold on the promise of divine 
mercy in the Christ. He looked and longed 
for the coming of that King who should reign 
in righteousness forever. He did not under- 
stand the full meaning of that hope. He held 
fast to it as a drowning man clings to a rope in 
the night. He does not see it. He feels it. 

Take away that rescuing hope of divine help 
laid upon one who is mighty to save , 1 and what 
is left in the Psalms ? A passion of longing for 
inaccessible holiness. 

The poetry of the Bible without Christ is a 
musical confession of the impossibility of get- 
ting out of God’s sight, and of the hopelessness 
of being pure enough in heart to have sight of 
God. 

Does the philosophy of the Bible bring us 
any different message, apart from Christ ? 

Solomon stands in the Old Testament as the 
representative of wisdom. In the books that 
bear his name the divine commandments are 
cut and polished into the jewels of an ethical 

1 Psalm 89 : 19. 

325 


THE BIBLE WITHOUT CHRIST 


system. They become brilliant, symmetrical, 
memorable; compact treasures of morality, fit 
to keep — in a storehouse. A hundred epigrams 
flash from the divine law, in the hands of Solo- 
mon, like rays of light. Its wisdom, reason- 
ableness, and beauty are exhibited from every 
side. We see how prudent, how profitable, how 
admirable it is to be perfectly good, — and how 
impossible ! The king who made these diamond 
proverbs was the man who showed us how easily 
they may be burned to coal in the flame of pas- 
sion. 

The eleventh chapter of the First Book of 
Kings is the record of an experiment in the 
reduction of philosophy to ashes. The lover 
of wisdom chooses folly for his bed-fellow. The 
sage whose shining words rise like an airy lad- 
der towards the skies, finds, like other men, 
that the downward path is the easiest. The 
wisest of mankind, in theory, becomes the 
meanest, in practice, — an idolater despising 
idols, a sensualist praising virtue, a tyrant ex- 
tolling justice, an unchained prisoner of his 
own despair. 

The book of Ecclesiastes, whoever wrote it, 
contains the epitaph of Solomon. 4 ‘Vanity of 
vanities, all is vanity.” It is the hand-book 
of pessimists; the tragic monodrama of man’s 
326 


THE BIBLE WITHOUT CHRIST 


self-betrayal; the epic of the suicide of hope. 
Close the book, and write upon it this sentence, 
“The world by wisdom knew not God.” 1 

Beyond philosophy rises prophecy, — the 
mount of vision, whose top touches the stars 
and whose horizon spreads beyond the encir- 
cling ocean-stream of time. 

The human name that is graven highest on 
this mountain is the name of Isaiah. Whether 
that name represents the prophetic elevation of 
only one among the sons of men, or of more 
than one, matters little to us in our present 
study. The Isaiah-spirit is the same, whether 
the mount was climbed but once, or more than 
once. The loftiest point reached in the Old 
Testament is that at which we see, in lonely 
grandeur, a human figure called Isaiah. There 
he stands, above the confusions and perturba- 
tions, the wrecked hopes, and the onrushing 
calamities, the shames and fears, the desola- 
tions and disasters of his people. He looks 
around him, with unsealed eyes, and what is it 
that he beholds ? He sees “one that cometh 
from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah, 
glorious in his apparel, travelling in the great- 
ness of his strength, speaking in righteousness, 

1 1 Cor. 1 : 21. 

327 


THE BIBLE WITHOUT CHRIST 


mighty to save.” 1 But this vision, if there is 
no Christ in the Old Testament, is a delusion, 
a mirage, a Brocken-spectre. It vanishes. And 
what is left ? 

An unbroken shadow of disgrace, despair, 
and gloom, resting like night upon the world. 
“Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, 
a seed of evil doers, children that are corrupters : 
they have forsaken the Lord, they have pro- 
voked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they 
are gone away backward .” 2 Burden after 
burden, in the prophet’s song, — the burden of 
Babylon, the burden of Moab, the burden of 
Damascus, the burden of Egypt. Doom after 
doom, around the prophet’s horizon, — the doom 
of Israel, the doom of Judah. “The whole 
head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From 
the sole of the foot even unto the head there 
is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, 
and putrefying sores.” 3 

Never man lived on earth who felt so deeply 
the world’s want of a Saviour from sin as Isaiah 
felt it. Never man saw so clearly that human- 
ity is helpless and hopeless under the power 
of evil unless God comes to the rescue. The 
law’s maker must be its keeper. He who cursed 
sin must come and take it away. A redeeming 

1 Is. 63:1. 2 J g 1 ; 4. 8 Is. 1 : 5. 6. 

328 


THE BIBLE WITHOUT CHRIST 


God, holy and therefore obedient, loving and 
therefore suffering, faithful and therefore tri- 
umphant, — this is the Immanuel who is needed 
in a world of sin. Isaiah’s soul was driven by 
that need upward and upward on the mount 
of vision, higher and higher in the divine soli- 
tude of inspiration. From that lofty height 
his voice floated down in songs of glorious cheer 
to his fellow-men. “ Comfort ye, comfort ye, 
my people .’* 1 “Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, 
and be glad with her, all ye that love her: re- 
joice for joy with her, all ye that mourn for 
her.” 2 

But what was it that he saw to kindle that 
singing hope in his soul ? Nothing. He 
dreamed, but there was really nothing for him 
to see. 

There was no roseate dawn on the far edge 
of night, no radiance of a virgin-born Prince 
of Peace, no prophetic gleam of the glory of a 
Kinsman Redeemer who should bear our griefs 
and carry our sorrows, who should be wounded 
for our transgressions, and by whose stripes we 
should be healed. When Isaiah thought that 
he saw the upward-streaming rays of such a 
brightness, it was but an illusion of sleep. 
There was no Christ. There was to be no 

1 Is. 40 : 1. 3 Is. 66 : 10. 

329 


THE BIBLE WITHOUT CHRIST 


Christ. God never intended it. Man only 
imagined it. The high and holy One who in- 
habiteth eternity looked upon the inhabitants 
of earth, “and he saw that there was no man, 
and wondered that there was no intercessor.” 1 
But his arm did not bring salvation unto him, 
neither did his righteousness sustain him. The 
Redeemer never meant to come to Zion. He 
was too great, too infinite to enter into human 
life, and be numbered with the transgressors, 
and bear the sin of many, and make interces- 
sion for the transgressors. The very thought 
of such an advent was folly and presumption. 

Isaiah awakes from his dream. Every trace 
of the Christ disappears from his vision, blotted 
out in the encircling night. What is his mes- 
sage now ? What song is left on his lips ? 

A cry of woe and desolation. “They shall 
look unto the earth; and behold trouble and 
darkness, dimness of anguish; and they shall 
be driven to darkness .” 2 “Your iniquities have 
separated between you and your God, and your 
sins have hid his face from you, that he will 
not hear.” 3 

There is no explanation of the mystery of 
evil. There is no light upon the future. There 
is only a shadow resting over all the earth, a 

1 Is. 59 : 16. 2 Is. 8 : 22. 

330 


3 Is. 59 : 2. 


THE BIBLE WITHOUT CHRIST 


shadow hiding the very face of God, — an un- 
broken shadow falling from the Old Testament 
without Christ. 

II 

THE INTOLERABLE LIGHT 

It may seem as if it were impossible to take 
Christ out of the New Testament without de- 
stroying it altogether. So entirely does the 
personality of Jesus pervade the book, that if 
he were withdrawn it would fall to pieces, like 
a tower from which the mortar had been all 
removed. 

But it is not of Jesus as an example of noble 
manhood, a teacher of moral truth, a worker of 
social reform, that I speak. It is of Jesus as 
the Christ, the divinely anointed redeemer of 
men, the bringer of salvation from sin. These 
two aspects of Jesus were, indeed, vitally united 
in fact. Yet it is possible to separate them in 
thought. It is conceivable that the New Tes- 
tament might have reported Jesus to us as a 
prophet without making any revelation of him 
as the Saviour. 

Such a conception has already been enter- 
tained among men. It has been presented by 
some teachers, whose literary and historical 
sense is very imperfect, as an interpretation of 
331 


THE BIBLE WITHOUT CHRIST 

what the New Testament actually is. It has 
been put forward by others, whose scholarship 
is better, as a theory of what the New Testa- 
ment ought to be, and probably would have 
been, if it had been written in an age free from 
superstition. 

“That which is really valuable in the book, ,, 
we are told, “is its picture of a beautiful char- 
acter, its rules for good conduct, its spirit of 
piety and virtue, the clear light which it throws 
upon God and human life and immortality. 
If it contained only the Sermon on the Mount, 
it would still be complete and sufficient. The 
substance of it all could be put into an ethical 
creed. The essential Jesus is only the teacher 
and illustrator of a perfect morality. He is the 
central figure of Christianity not because he 
did more than man can do, but simply because 
he did what every man ought to do. All that 
goes beyond this in the New Testament, — all 
that refers to him as the sacrifice for sin, the 
mediator between God and man, the only be- 
gotten Son who came forth from the bosom of 
the Father, was born and lived, was crucified 
and died, was buried and rose again, in order 
to redeem and reconcile the world to God, — 
is partly imaginary, and partly superstitious, 
and wholly unnecessary. A New Testament 
332 


THE BIBLE WITHOUT CHRIST 


without Christ in this sense, would be not only 
possible, but very desirable.” 

The experiment may be tried. The testimony 
of Jesus and the Apostles in regard to his work 
as the Saviour may be obliterated, as the censor 
“ blacks out” the passages of a book which he 
deems dangerous. The cross as the central 
scene of the great reconciliation between man 
and God may be hidden. Christ as the deliverer 
from sin and death may be annulled in our 
thought. We shall then be able to estimate 
the meaning and value of the New Testament 
without him. 

There are two things in the book which must 
strike every fair-minded reader. In two points 
it is distinguished among all the books of the 
world. It gives a new and intensely searching 
view of the problem of moral evil. It is written 
from beginning to end in sight of death as the 
door which leads into eternity. 

On these two points the New Testament 
pours an unrivalled light. Does it give us any 
comfort or hope in regard to them, without 
Christ ? 

It was Jesus of Nazareth who illuminated 
the moral evil in the world most deeply and 
clearly. He showed its spring, its secret work- 
333 


THE BIBLE WITHOUT CHRIST 


ings, and the power which lies behind it. 
Calmly, steadily, with a sublime indifference 
to theory, with an inexorable sense of the facts 
of human life, he pressed his serene and faithful 
analysis of sin home to its centre in the inner 
life of man. 

A falsehood on the lips means a lie in the 
heart. Violence in conduct means a cruel streak 
in character. Uncleanness in the life means 
impurity in the soul. “Those things which 
proceed out of the mouth come forth from the 
heart; and they defile the man.” 1 

Jesus does not say that everything in human 
nature is evil. He does not say that all men 
are entirely depraved. He recognizes the good 
things that a good man bringeth forth out of 
his good treasure . 2 But he says also that all 
men, even the best, have need to be converted 
and become as little children ; 3 all men owe a 
vast debt which they are unable to pay ; 4 all 
men are unprofitable servants ; 5 all men have 
something to repent of, in the presence of God . 6 

And this something which demands repen- 
tance is not outward and accidental; it is in- 
ward and personal. It is the angry passion; 
it is the impure imagination; it is the secret 

1 St. Matt. 15 : 18. , * St. Matt. 12 : 35. 3 St. Matt. 18:3. 

4 St. Matt. 18 : 23. 5 St. Luke 17 : 10. 6 St. Luke 13 : 3. 

334 


THE BIBLE WITHOUT CHRIST 


unbelief which blinds the soul. All the excuses 
with which men cover and hide their sin grow 
thin and transparent in the light of this search- 
ing analysis. Jesus reveals the underlying 
facts. The sins of men are not the result of 
circumstances, the fruit of outward tempta- 
tions, things which belong to the world and 
the age in which we live. They are things which 
belong to us and come from us. The fashions 
and forms of sin change with the centuries and 
differ in different lands. But the essence of it is 
always the same. It comes from within. The 
man in whose heart the root is hidden is re- 
sponsible for the fruit. This is what Jesus says 
about the source of sin. 

No less clear and penetrating is his teaching 
in regard to its secret workings and its fatal 
results. He reveals the truth that goodness 
does not consist in obedience to the letter of 
the law, but in harmony with its spirit. A man 
may keep all the commandments, as the young 
ruler did, and yet because he is selfish he is 
outside of the kingdom of God . 1 A man may 
observe all the Mosaic precepts and perform 
all the ritual of religion, as the Pharisee did, 
and yet be a greater sinner than the Publican 

1 St. Matt. 19. 

335 


THE BIBLE WITHOUT CHRIST 


who stands afar off and beats upon his breast . 1 
Men are strangers to their own sins; they do 
not recognize them when they meet them in 
the street. They are blind leaders of the blind, 
whose feet stumble in the gulf. The angry 
impulse is the “blot in the ’scutcheon.” The 
real stain of blood is on the inside of the heart. 
The idle, irreverent word is blasphemy. There 
are no human lips that have not taken God’s 
name in vain. The scorn of brethren is the 
little spark that kindles unquenchable flames. 
They in whose breast this spark smoulders are 
“in danger of hell-fire.” 2 But they do not 
know it. They carry their lighted candles 
through the powder-magazine with their eyes 
shut. 

The Sermon on the Mount contains the most 
thorough diagnosis of sin that has ever been 
made. It proceeds by contrast with the symp- 
toms of spiritual health and soundness. The 
Beatitudes are not only blessings to be desired; 
they are also tests to be applied to the heart. 
It was not without significance that this dis- 
course was delivered from a lofty place. “Be 
ye perfect even as your Father which is in 
heaven is perfect.” 8 That summit is inacces- 

1 St. Luke 18. 2 St. Matt. 5 : 22. 

8 St. Matt. 5 : 48. 

336 


THE BIBLE WITHOUT CHRIST 


sible if there is no divine Christ to lead us 
thither. 

But there is another element in the doctrine 
of Jesus in regard to sin which we must not 
forget. He discloses a secret power behind it, 
which clothes it with strange terror and might. 
He teaches that there is a force, an influence, 
a spirit in the world, which is altogether evil, 
and which is continually desiring, seeking, and 
working sin. It is the unclean spirit rejoicing 
in the defilement of the house which it inhabits . 1 
It is the father of lies ready to beget falsehood 
in every listening mind . 2 It is the enemy of 
souls sowing tares in the field by night . 3 It is 
Satan longing to get possession of the soul that 
he may sift it as wheat . 4 

Whether we take this teaching of Jesus lit- 
erally or not, whether we believe that evil is 
embodied in demonic personality or not, one 
thing is unquestionable. Jesus regarded evil 
as a positive, organic, ever active, malignant 
power, a Prince of this world, whose domain 
lies all around us, whose influence touches us on 
every side, the friend of sin and the foe of the 
soul. There is a conflict going on in the world., 

i St. Matt. 12 : 43/. 2 St. John 8 : 44. 

8 St. Matt. 13 : 39. 4 St. Luke 22 : 31. 

337 


THE BIBLE WITHOUT CHRIST 


It is not a mere game. It is an elemental war- 
fare between right and wrong. We are cast 
into the midst of this conflict. An unseen, 
mighty, skilful, relentless adversary is against 
us. And in every heart there is a traitor ready 
to betray the citadel into his hands. 

The additional fear which this mysterious 
teaching of Jesus lends to the sense of sin made 
itself felt in human experience for many cen- 
turies. Doubtless it was over-emphasised and 
exaggerated, by a false interpretation of his 
words, into an immense and shapeless terror. 
A grotesque and impossible devil tyrannized 
over ages of superstition. Men believed in a 
Satan who was practically the rival of God, 
equal in power if not in glory, and as immortal 
in evil as God is in good. There is no trace 
of such a doctrine in the words of Jesus. It 
was natural, it was inevitable, that men should 
react from the exaggeration, and cast off almost 
entirely, as they have done to-day, the thought 
of an actual power of evil, outside of the human 
soul and inexorably hostile to it. 

But when we return to the teachings of Jesus, 
and study them with candour and calmness, 
we see that thought in his mind clearly and 
unmistakably. He teaches us that our conflict 
is not merely with ourselves. There is an enemy 
338 


THE BIBLE WITHOUT CHRIST 


against us who is mightier than man. We need 
a defender, a deliverer, a divine friend to fight 
with us and for us. 

Where, then, shall we look for such a power- 
ful friend? If Jesus was not the Christ who 
came to save us from our sins, then there is 
no captain of salvation, no conqueror of Satan, 
no liberator of captive souls. We must fight 
the battle alone against unknown and heavy 
odds. The triumph of Jesus over evil was for 
himself only. It gives no assurance that we 
also shall overcome the world. On the con- 
trary, it makes our victory seem the more 
doubtful, when we remember his perfect cour- 
age and inflexible strength, in contrast with our 
waverings and the many defeats that we have 
already suffered. We have begun to lose the 
battle already. Who shall turn the tide for our 
discouraged forces ? 

The sinlessness of Jesus comforts us little 
unless it has some remedial bearing upon our 
sins. If it is but an example of what every man 
ought to be, its very perfection daunts and 
disheartens us. Something less absolute and 
flawless would be better suited to our need. 

In fact, men have never dared or cared to 
make the stainless Jesus the real pattern of 
their lives, until they have learned to believe 
339 


THE BIBLE WITHOUT CHRIST 


in him as the redeeming sacrifice for their sins. 
They have chosen other ideals, other heroes, 
other examples, — less exacting, less disheart- 
ening, less depressing by contrast with them- 
selves. 

It is the ransoming faith that “Christ suf- 
fered for us,” that gives his disciples courage to 
say that he also left us “an example that we 
should follow in his steps.” 1 The idea of “The 
Imitation of Christ” is hopeful and inspiring 
only to the heart that has first felt the liberat- 
ing touch of his pierced hand. Sinners do not 
venture to go after the sinless Jesus unless they 
hear him say “The Son of man hath power on 
earth to forgive sins.” 2 

But in a Christless gospel this word would 
have no place, no meaning. There would be no 
such unique power in the hands of Jesus. All 
the consoling, reassuring, inspiriting utterances 
of Jesus, which are connected with his sublime 
confidence in his divine mission and authority 
to seek and save the lost, — utterances which 
strangely enough are closely and inseparably 
connected with the prevision of his death, his 
laying down his life for the sheep , 3 his lifting 
up upon the cross, 4 — -all these words of saving 
hope would be “blacked out.” 

1 1 Peter 2 : 21. 

3 St. John 10 : 11. 


340 


2 St. Matt. 9 : 6. 
4 St. John 3 : 14. 


THE BIBLE WITHOUT CHRIST 


They lose their significance, if the Redeemer 
is lost. There was no ransom wrought upon 
the cross. There was only the payment of the 
debt of nature. The good Shepherd laid down 
his life. But it was not for the sheep. It was 
only to show the cruelty of the robbers. There 
was no victory on Calvary. It was a defeat, 
in which the one sinless being on earth was 
crushed and killed by the sin of the world, — 
but not for it. 

Let us turn from the Gospels to the Epistles, 
and consider what they have to say to us about 
sin, when we have taken out of them the idea 
of a work wrought by Jesus Christ for the sal- 
vation of the world. It is evident that the 
Apostles have received the teaching of their 
Master in regard to the source, the workings, 
the guilt, and the danger of sin, and that it has 
made a profound impression upon them. 

No doubt there was some difference between 
St. John and St. Paul in regard to the philo- 
sophic forms in which they expressed their 
thought upon this subject. St. Paul was trained 
in the rabbinical theology of Jerusalem. St. 
John was influenced by the Platonic philosophy 
of Alexandria. St. Paul lays emphasis upon the 
connection of sin with “the flesh,” with man’s 
341 


THE BIBLE WITHOUT CHRIST 


lower, physical nature. 1 St. John brings out 
“the darkness” of sin as contrasted with the 
light of God. 2 St. Paul traces the entrance of 
sin into the world to Adam’s disobedience. 3 
St. John speaks of “the world” as an order of 
existence estranged from God, which must not 
be loved because it is opposed to the love of 
God, 4 and declares that “the whole world lieth 
in the Evil One.” 5 But both agree in teaching 
that sin is transgression of the divine law; 6 and 
that its fruit is death. 7 It is their sense of the 
reality and guilt of the transgression, their 
overwhelming sense of the greatness of the 
disaster which threatens all men on account 
of it, that separates them as writers from the 
easy-going, reckless pagan world. “If we say 
we have not sinned,” says St. John, “we deceive 
ourselves and the truth is not in us.” 8 “When 
I would do good,” cries St. Paul, “evil is pres- 
ent with me. 0 wretched man that I am, who 
shall deliver me from the body of this death ?” 9 
But if this is all that they have to say to us, 
if they bring us no message of a divine Christ 


1 Rom. 7:5; 8 : 4, 6; 2 Cor. 10 : 2; Gal. 5 : 17; Eph. 2 : 3. 

2 1 John 1:6; 2:9, 11; Rev. 16 : 10. 

3 Rom. 5 : 12-21. 4 1 John 2 : 15. 5 1 John 5 : 19. 

8 1 John 3 : 4; Rom. 7 : 13. 

7 Rom. 6 : 23; 8:6; 1 John 3 : 14; 5 : 16; 2 Cor. 15 : 56. 

8 1 John 1:8. 9 Rom. 7 : 21, 24. 


342 


THE BIBLE WITHOUT CHRIST 

who hath appeared to put away sin, how lame 
and impotent is their conclusion! Read St. 
Paul’s answer to his own question, who is to 
deliver him, with Christ left out: ‘I thank 
God, through nobody .’ Read St. John’s con- 
solation to those who have sinned, without the 
gospel of atonement. 4 If any man sin, we have 
no advocate with the Father, neither is there 
any propitiation for our sins, nor for the sins 
of the whole world.’ ‘Herein is love, not that 
we loved God, but that he did not love us, 
neither did he send his Son to be the justifica- 
tion for our sins.’ 

Go on a little further with this Christless 
New Testament. Listen to St. Paul again: 
‘For as through one man sin entered into the 
world, and death through sin, and so death 
passed unto all men, for that all sinned, — even 
so there was no grace of God, and the gift of 
grace by the one man, Jesus Christ, did not 
abound unto many.’ ‘Sin reigned unto death, 
but grace did not reign through righteousness 
unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.’ 
‘God commendeth his love towards us in that 
while we were yet sinners nobody died for us.’ 
‘Wherefore remember that ye were aliens from 
the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to 
the covenants of promise; and now ye that 
343 


THE BIBLE WITHOUT CHRIST 


were far off are not made nigh by the blood 
of Christ.’ ‘God is not in Christ reconciling 
the world unto himself.’ ‘There is no medi- 
ator between God and man.’ ‘The life that 
I now live in the flesh I live by faith in my- 
self, for the Son of God did not love me, nor 
give himself for me.’ 

Listen to the author of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews: ‘Having then no high priest who 
hath passed into the heavens, let us not draw 
near with boldness unto the throne of grace, 
for we have no promise of mercy, nor grace to 
help in time of need.’ ‘For we are not come 
unto Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, 
and to the blood of sprinkling which speaketh 
better things than that of Abel, but unto Mt. 
Sinai that burns with fire.’ 

Listen to St. Peter: ‘We know that we were 
not redeemed, neither with corruptible things 
as silver and gold, nor with the precious blood 
of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and 
without spot.’ ‘Wherefore, not having seen 
him, we love him not, neither do we rejoice 
in him, since we receive not the end of our faith, 
nor the salvation of our souls.’ 

This is what the New Testament would say 
to a world of sin, without Christ. It is surely 
not consoling. 


344 


THE BIBLE WITHOUT CHRIST 


But the significance of this teaching is very 
much intensified and deepened by the view 
which the New Testament gives of death as 
the gateway of another life. 

The heathen world in the first century was 
for the most part inclined to cover up the fact 
of death as much as possible, to hide it in 
flowers, to put it out of sight. But the Chris- 
tians, perhaps because they were persecuted 
and afflicted and continually in danger of death, 
perhaps because they had a truer and a braver 
philosophy of life, followed another course. 
They faced death steadily, looked it in the eyes, 
prepared to meet it, and conquered all its terrors 
by their faith in Christ as the Saviour. 

There is no other book in the world which 
can compare with the New Testament in its 
serene, unflinching recognition of death’s in- 
evitableness. There is no other book in the 
world which has so clear and courageous an in- 
sight into its eternal issues. From beginning 
to end it is pervaded with the conviction that 
“It is appointed unto all men once to die, and 
after death the judgment.” 

Now the burden of death is twofold. There 
is a burden of present sorrow and anguish, in 
the sufferings of the flesh which precede and 
accompany it, and in the pains of the spirit 
345 


THE BIBLE WITHOUT CHRIST 


which are associated with the breaking of hu- 
man ties and the bereavement of love. There 
is also a burden of fear and anxiety for the fu- 
ture, a sense of apprehension in regard to the 
perils and mysteries of the unknown world. 

Both of these burdens, in the New Testament, 
are lifted by trust in Christ. It is the sense of 
fellowship with him in their sufferings that 
sustains the Christians in the valley of the 
shadow of death. It is the confidence that he 
has risen from the dead and that he will plead 
for them at the judgment, that enables them 
to face the future with composure. But if 
Christ is taken away, both burdens fall back 
with new and crushing weight upon the heart. 
“If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching 
vain, and your faith is also vain.” “If in this 
life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all 
men most miserable.” 1 

What practical assurance, what tangible 
proof, is there of a divine sympathy in our suf- 
ferings, without the vision of the Son of God 
who has borne our griefs and carried our sor- 
rows? The God of nature, the God who made 
the heavens bright and beautiful with stars, 
and ordained the immutable glories of the re- 
volving year, — what can he understand of the 

1 1 Cor. 15 : 14, 19. 

346 


THE BIBLE WITHOUT CHRIST 


pains that rack our human hearts, what part 
has he in the broken and tragical drama of mor- 
tal life? A sublime spectator, 

“He sees with equal eyes , as God of all , 

A hero perish or a sparrow fall” 

I think a man or woman with a breaking 
heart, pierced with the spear of pain, smitten 
with the anguish of inexorable separation, might 
go out into this splendid world in the spring, 
when the glory of earth’s face is renewed with 
joy and the time for the singing of birds is come, 
— such a lonely, desolate, perishing man or 
woman might walk among the unconscious 
flowers, and look up to the silent-shining sky, 
and the unfriended heart would break again 
with the thought that there is after all no clear 
word of divine sympathy with it, — no human 
life of God, no Christ who wept at the grave 
of Lazarus, and agonized in the garden, and 
died on the cross, in order that he might know, 
with us, the mortal sorrows of a world of sin 
and death. 

What comfort, what peace, is there in the 
New Testament view of death, unless we can 
see beyond it what St. Paul saw when he said, 
“I know whom I have believed, and am per- 
suaded that he is able to keep that which I 
347 


THE BIBLE WITHOUT CHRIST 


have committed unto him against that day.” 1 
— “O death, where is thy sting ? O grave, where 
is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and 
the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be 
to God, which giveth us the victory through 
our Lord Jesus Christ.” 2 Annul that gospel 
of victory over death by One who has taken 
away the sting of sin, and what remains? A 
certain fearful looking-for of judgment; a vision 
of futurity with no reasonable hope of escape 
from evil and its consequences; a prospect of 
dying without getting rid of the disease which 
kills us. 

Read again the words of the Apostles after 
you have blotted out their gospel of the con- 
quest of death by Christ. ‘Through death 
he was destroyed by him that had the power 
of death, that is, the devil, and brought no 
deliverance to them who through fear of death 
were all their lifetime subject to bondage.’ 
‘God hath not raised him up, neither were the 
pains of death loosed, because it was not pos- 
sible that he should escape from it.’ ‘The 
enemy that shall never be destroyed is death.’ 
‘This same Jesus shall never come again.’ 
‘He liveth not to make intercession for his peo- 
ple.’ ‘Even as he never was offered to bear 

1 2 Tim. 1 : 12. 


348 


1 1 Cor. 15 : 55-57. 


THE BIBLE WITHOUT CHRIST 

the sin of many, so shall he never again ap- 
pear without sin unto salvation to them that 
wait for him/ ‘If we believe not that Jesus 
died and rose again, even so them also which 
sleep with Jesus will God never bring with 
him.’ 

“ Christ is not risen! 

Eat , drink , and die , for we are souls bereaved; 

Of all the creatures under heaven' s high cope. 
We are most hopeless , who once had most hope , 
And most beliefless , that had most believed . 

Ashes to ashes , dust to dust , 

As of the unjust , also of the just ; 

Yea , of that Just One too , 

It is the one sad Gospel that is true , — 

Christ is not risen 1" 

To take Christ out of the Bible is to make it 
worse than useless to a sinful world. It is to 
make it crushing, disheartening, terrifying, — 
the saddest book that was ever written. The 
Old Testament casts upon us an unbroken 
shadow of gloomy fate. The New Testament 
pierces it with an intolerable light of conscious 
guilt and coming judgment. 

But restore Christ to his place in the Bible, 
and it becomes the book of hope and joy. The 
unbroken shadow is changed into the adum- 
bration of the coming Redeemer. The intoler- 
349 


THE BIBLE WITHOUT CHRIST 


able light is transformed into a healing radiance: 
the light of the knowledge of the glory of God 
in the face of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the 
world. 


350 


IV 

CHRIST’S MISSION TO THE INNER 
LIFE 

HPHE ultimate mission of Christ was to the 
inner life of man. His ministry there was 
not in words alone, but in character and action; 
in what he was and what he did for men; the 
heart of his message was himself, his life, his 
death. The central gospel of this message is 
the reality and completeness of peace with 
God through the forgiveness of sins. The for- 
giveness of sins brings with it the freedom and 
power of a new inner life of divine righteous- 
ness. 

These four statements may serve to mark 
out, in a broad way, the line of thought that I 
wish to follow in this chapter. 

I 

THE KINGDOM IS WITHIN YOU 

Christ came into the world to proclaim and 
establish the kingdom of God among men. The 
sway of that kingdom extends over every region 
of our life. But its seat must be within us. 

351 


CHRIST’S MISSION 


It must reach and reconcile and rule that 
interior region of the heart which lies behind 
audible utterance and visible action, below 
social ties and bonds of human fellowship, un- 
derneath conscious reasonings and formulated 
theories, — that undiscovered country where the 
moral sentiments, the religious feeling, the sense 
of dependence, and the joy or grief of living, 
have their home. 

It is there that the real forces of human life 
are generated. Man could not “live by bread 
alone,” even if he would. Every phase of his 
existence betrays the presence of an energy, 
whether for good or for evil, which is drawn 
from some secret source deep within him. 

Vitality, in man, is a spiritual force condi- 
tioned, but not created, by a material embodi- 
ment. A vitometer will never be invented, be- 
cause there is no instrument delicate enough 
to take the temperature of the inner life. Even 
in dealing with bodily disease, the wise physi- 
cian, while he may make his diagnosis absolute, 
always recognizes an element of uncertainty in 
his prognosis. “While there is life there is 
hope,” he says. He might add, “While there 
is hope there is life.” Hope has healed more 
diseases than any medicine. 

The life of man is a demonstrated daily mira- 
352 


TO THE INNER LIFE 


cle. It shows that the physical laws which we 
know and the physical forces which we can 
measure, are traversed by spiritual laws which 
we do not know and spiritual forces which we 
cannot measure. It proves the reality and 
potency of that which is invisible and impon- 
derable. 

The various kinds of energy which are de- 
veloped from heat are not more real, nor more 
powerful, than the actual working force which 
is developed in the world from love in the inner 
life of man. Gravitation itself does no more 
to insure the stability of the material order, 
than inward peace of soul does to maintain 
the stability of the social order. The wind that 
bloweth where it listeth, is no more efficient 
in purifying and vitalizing the atmosphere, 
than are the secret spiritual currents of peni- 
tence and faith and aspiration which breathe 
through the hearts of men, in cleansing and 
renewing the inner air which keeps the soul 
alive. 

This is the reason why sin is a power of dis- 
order and death. It is not because it affects 
the outer life, not because it sows the seeds of 
physical corruption and decay, not because it 
brings forth crimes of violence and destruction. 
It is because it pervades the inner life, because 
353 


CHRIST’S MISSION 


it poisons the streams of human existence at 
the fountain-head, because it paralyzes the 
vital energies of humanity. 

Sin is a separating, secluding, imprisoning 
power which shuts the soul off from the purify- 
ing breath of the divine Spirit and leaves it in 
a dungeon, to breathe the same air over and 
over again until it is smothered. Sin is a re- 
bellious, turbulent, tormenting power which 
destroys the inward peace of the soul, agitates 
it with restless passion, tortures it with haunt- 
ing fear. Sin is a selfish, envious, hateful power 
which takes the very life out of love and makes 
it impotent for good. 

The supreme simplicity of Jesus as the bringer 
of a new kingdom into the world, came from 
the clearness with which he saw that the world’s 
chief trouble and man’s deepest need lie in the 
inner life. He wasted no strength in polishing 
the outside of the cups and platters on which 
man’s exterior wants are served. He spent no 
time in whitening sepulchres. He knew that 
the seat of real goodness and permanent hap- 
piness must be in the inner life. The incom- 
parable service to mankind which was to give 
him the chieftaincy in the spiritual life, was a 
service to the soul. 

There can be no real empire of peace unless 
354 


TO THE INNER LIFE 


this deepest region is reached. There must be 
no nook or corner or crevice of man’s life left 
unexplored, unsubdued, unreconciled; no lurk- 
ing-place of rebellion; no fountain of discord; 
no 

“ little rift within the lute , 

That slowly widening makes the music mute” 


The kingdom must go in to the centre and 
down to the bottom of personality, and work 
from within outward, — from below upward. 
This was the programme of Christ; and to 
carry it out he directed his journey to the inner 
life of man. 

On the way thither, like a prince in progress, 
he conferred inestimable gifts and blessings in 
the outer circles of human existence. The doc- 
trine of Jesus has widened the thoughts of men. 
The example of Jesus has crystallized the moral 
aspirations of men into a supreme ideal. The 
precept of Jesus has struck the keynote for a 
new harmony of human fellowship. The in- 
fluence of Jesus has given inspiration and gui- 
dance to philosophy and literature and the fine 
arts. 

But as we follow him through these regions 
we are aware that he is pressing inward to a 
goal beyond. He seeks the thinker, we say, 
355 


CHRIST’S MISSION 

behind the thought; the person, behind the 
social order. He aims to elevate man by up- 
lifting men. His mission is not to masses, nor 
to classes; it is to the individual. But when 
he finds the individual, as a thinker, as a social 
unit, what then? Still Christ seems to press 
inward, to seek a yet deeper point. 

His mission to society is through the indi- 
vidual. But when we have said that, we have 
not yet said all. His mission to the individual 
is through the inner life. He has not arrived 
at the goal of his journey, he has not spoken 
the last word of his message until he has said 
to the paralytic, “Son, be of good cheer, thy 
sins are forgiven thee”; and to the woman of 
Syro-Phoenicia, “Go in peace”; and to the 
disciples, “Let not your heart be troubled”; 
and to all the weary and heavy-laden, “Come 
unto me, and ye shall find rest unto your 
souls.” 

The kingdom of God which Jesus proclaims 
and establishes is a kingdom of the soul. Its 
deepest meaning is a personal experience. Its 
essence is righteousness and peace and joy in 
the Holy Ghost. Its dwelling-place and seat 
of power is in the inner life. 


356 


TO THE INNER LIFE 


II 

THE PICTURE OF JESUS IN THE SOUL 

If this be true, it is perfectly natural, and 
altogether reasonable, that the earliest and 
clearest and most enduring manifestation of 
Christ should be in this region of man’s inmost 
being. The traces of his presence in the world 
should be most distinct and most indelible in 
the records of spiritual experience. The evi- 
dences of his healing, harmonizing power should 
be found first and most abundantly in those 
underlying relations, those mysterious senti- 
ments and propensities, — 

“those obstinate questionings 
Of sense and outward things , 

Fallings from us , vanishing s ; 

Blank misgivings of a creature 
Moving about in worlds not realized , 

High instincts before which our mortal Nature 
Doth tremble like a guilty thing surprized: 

Those first affections , 

Those shadowy recollections , 

Which , be they what they may , 

Are yet the fountain light of all our day." 

And so in fact we find it to be. The image 
of Jesus comes to light, first of all, in the spir- 
itual experience of man. The earliest and the 
357 


CHRIST’S MISSION 


most wonderful picture of him is simply a liv- 
ing reflection of him in man’s inner life. 

Before we can discern any influence of his 
teaching, as a great reformer, upon the institu- 
tions of society; before we can perceive any 
effect of those large, simple truths which he 
brought to light, upon the orderly thinking of 
the world; before we can trace the rudest be- 
ginnings of Christian art, the most ancient 
formulas of Christian worship, the earliest foun- 
dations of Christian temples; yes, even before 
we can find any narrative of the life of Jesus, 
any collection of his sayings, any record of his 
deeds, — first of all, and most vivid of all, we 
see the person of Jesus printed upon the hearts 
and revealed in the letters of certain men who 
loved and trusted and adored him as their 
Saviour from sin. 

In time, the Epistles come before the Gospels. 
I do not say they are more authentic, more 
precious, than the Gospels. I do not say they 
are ever to be read or interpreted apart from 
the Gospels. But I say they are sacred to all 
Christian hearts, because they are the place 
where we first catch sight of Jesus Christ in 
this world. And their personal testimony, their 
peculiar significance, their religious meaning, 
must never be forgotten or denied, if we want 
358 


TO THE INNER LIFE 


to know what Christ came to do, and what 
Christ really did, for the life of man. 

For what are these Epistles? They are not 
formal treatises of theology, of ethics, of church 
government. They are simply transcripts of 
the spiritual experience of real men, — St. Peter 
and St. Paul and St. John, and perhaps some 
others whose names we do not know. 

No one can doubt that the centre of these 
letters is Jesus Christ. He is their theme and 
their inspiration, their impulse and their aim. 
They are written in his name. They bear wit- 
ness to his power, they glow with his praise. 
They are, first of all, and most of all, evidences 
of the place which Jesus held in the inner life 
of these men, testimonies to the change which 
he wrought in their souls, — a change so great, 
so deep, so joyful, that it was like a new birth, 
a veritable passing from death unto life. Listen 
to a description of this change, in words as fresh 
and glowing as if they had been written but 
yesterday: — 

“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is 
a new creature: old things are passed away; 
behold, all things are become new. And all 
things are of God, who hath reconciled us to 
himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us 
the ministry of reconciliation; to wit, that 
' 359 


CHRIST’S MISSION 

God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto 
himself, not imputing their trespasses unto 
them; and hath committed unto us the word 
of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors 
for Christ, as though God did beseech you by 
us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye recon- 
ciled to God. For he hath made him to be sin 
for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made 
the righteousness of God in him.” 

This is an authentic description of the mis- 
sion of Christ to the inner life of man. This is 
a reflection of what he really effected in the 
secret place of the human heart. This is the 
voice of that new tide of peace which silently 
rose through man’s experience, — 

“ One common wave of thought and joy 
Lifting mankind again.” 

This is the original gospel, which began to win 
the world eighteen hundred years ago, and has 
never ceased to spread from heart to heart, 
from land to land, like music mixed with light. 

And it is the faithful and persistent witness 
to this experience, more than anything else, 
that has made Christianity a world-religion. 
A changed heart, uttering its new-found fe- 
licity in sweet and searching tones, — this is 
the miracle that has drawn the attention of 
360 


TO THE INNER LIFE 


men, century after century, to the teachings 
of Christianity. 

Its apostles won their way chiefly by the 
evidence which they gave that something had 
happened to transform their life at the fountain- 
head. The sense of newness in their souls was 
the source of their power. Whenever this sense 
of newness has faded and grown dim, the self- 
propagating force of Christianity has waned. 
Whenever this sense of newness has been deep 
and vivid, Christianity has advanced swiftly 
and found a wide welcome. Its most potent 
argument has been this simple and direct testi- 
mony to the pacification and renewal of the 
inner life by the acceptance of Jesus Christ as 
the Saviour. 

I am not concerned at present to justify it, 
to defend it, to argue for its truth or its moral- 
ity, to find a place for it in a system of theology 
or philosophy. What I want to do is to tell 
what it was; to show what it meant to the men 
who received it; to look at it, not as a theory, 
not as a doctrine, but as a spiritual experience; 
to let the inner life speak for itself about what 
Christ has done for the souls of those who have 
believed on him. 


361 


CHRIST’S MISSION 

III 

PEACE WITH GOD THROUGH CHRIST 

That Christ’s mission was one of joy and 
peace needs no proof. The New Testament 
is a book that throbs and glows with gladness. 
It is the one bright spot in the literature of the 
first century. The Christians were the happiest 
people in the world. Poor, they were rich; 
persecuted, they were exultant; martyred, they 
were victorious. The secret of Jesus, as they 
knew it, was a blessed secret. It filled them 
with the joy of living. Their watchword was, 
“Rejoice and be exceeding glad.” 

But what were the elements of that joy? 
What was it that had entered into their inner 
life thus to transform and illuminate it? 

To answer this question fully would be to 
give a summary of the primitive records of 
Christianity. All the manifold aspects of hu- 
man existence were affected, unmistakably and 
immediately, by faith in Jesus Christ as the 
Son of God and the Saviour of men. Those 
who received him thus into their hearts felt 
that they were saved. And if one had asked 
them from what they were saved, doubtless 
they would have wondered at the question, 
and would have answered, “From everything 
362 


TO THE INNER LIFE 


that brings trouble and fear and anguish and 
death into our souls.” 

The world looked to them like a new place, 
and they felt like new men. Sorrow was 
changed. Instead of a hopeless burden of 
affliction, it had become the means of working 
out for them a far more exceeding and eternal 
weight of glory. Death was changed. In- 
stead of a gloomy shadow enveloping the end 
of all things, it had become the gateway into 
a world of light. Duty was changed. Instead 
of an impossible compliance with an inexorable 
law, it had become a new obedience with divine 
help to accomplish it. They felt that they had 
received power in the inner life to become the 
sons of God. And the chief element in this 
power, according to their own testimony, was 
the sense of deliverance from the weight, the 
curse, the condemnation of sin, through the 
work of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

It is of this strange and wonderful feeling of 
salvation from sin that I wish to speak more 
particularly, not as a doctrine, not as a theory, 
but as an actual fact brought by Christ into 
the inner life of man. 

1. The normal Christian experience, as it 
is expressed by those who stand nearest to 
Christ, utters itself, first of all, as a great sense 
363 


CHRIST’S MISSION 


of peace with God through something which 
Christ has done to sweep away the barrier of 
sin between the human and the divine. 

Nowhere else in the world do we find such 
a deep and keen sense of sin, and of its three 
deadly facts, as Henry Drummond calls them, 
— its power, its stain, and its guilt; nowhere 
else in the world do we find these facts so clearly 
recognized, so profoundly felt, as in the New 
Testament. 

In many of our modem religious writers this 
sense of sin seems to be a vanishing quantity. 
Mr. Gladstone says: “They appear to have 
a very low estimate both of the quantity and 
the quality of sin; of its amount, spread like 
a deluge over the world, and of the subtlety, 
intensity, and virulence of its nature.” It is 
chiefly in the secular writers, the dramatists 
like Ibsen, the novelists like Hardy, that we 
find a full and clear recognition of the facts of 
moral evil to-day. And they offer no remedy, 
give no hope. 

But when we turn back to the New Testa- 
ment we come into touch with men who faced 
the facts, and, at the same time, felt that they 
had found the cure. 

Nothing that Jesus said or did, led his dis- 
ciples to minimize or disregard sin, to cover 
364 


TO THE INNER LIFE 


it up with flowers, to transform it into a mere 
defect or mistake, to deny its reality and ex- 
plain it away, to say 

“ The evil is naught , is null , is silence implying sound.” 

The whole effect of his mission, whatever form 
it may have taken, whatever its teaching may 
have been, — its undeniable effect was to in- 
tensify and deepen the consciousness of sin as 
a fatal thing from which men must needs be 
saved. 

“This is the condemnation,” says St. John, 
“that light is come into the world, and men 
loved darkness rather than light, because their 
deeds were evil.” 1 “All have sinned and come 
short of the glory of God,” says St. Paul; 
“death passed upon all men, for that all have 
sinned.” 2 “For whosoever shall keep the whole 
law,” says St. James, “and yet offend in one 
point, he is guilty of all.” 3 “If we say we have 
not sinned,” says St. John, “we make God a 
liar and his truth is not in us.” 4 

But with this overwhelming sense of sin which 
Christ brought into the inner life, he brought 
also an equally great and deep sense of deliver- 
ance from it. 


1 St. John 3 : 19. 

3 St. James 2 : 10. 


365 


5 Rom. 5:12. 

4 1 John 1 : 10. 


CHRIST’S MISSION 


“There is therefore now no condemnation 
to them that are in Christ Jesus, who walk 
not after the flesh but after the Spirit.” 1 “And 
you, being dead in your sins, hath he quickened 
together with him, having forgiven you all 
trespasses.” 2 If any man “have committed 
sins, they shall be forgiven unto him.” 3 “I 
write unto you, little children, because your 
sins are forgiven you for his name’s sake.” 4 

Now it is an extraordinary thing that men 
should speak thus, in one breath condemning 
themselves and in the next breath declaring 
their freedom from condemnation. And when 
we come to look into this strange utterance 
of the inner life, we find that it flows from a 
twofold experience. 

2. First of all, there is a profound, unalter- 
able conviction that the life and death of Jesus 
Christ are an expression of the forgiving love 
of God towards man. The old idea of God 
as a stern, angry, revengeful being, demand- 
ing and delighting in the death of the sinner, 
has vanished from the inner life of the true 
Christian. Somehow Christ has blotted it out. 
Somehow the Christian knows that God is love. 
And if we ask how he knows it, the answer is, 


1 Rom. 8 : 1. 

2 St. James 5 : 15. 


366 


2 Col. 2 : 13. 

4 1 John 2 : 12. 


TO THE INNER LIFE 


that the only begotten Son came forth from the 
bosom of the Father to reveal him. “ Herein 
is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved 
us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for 
our sins.” 1 “God commendeth his love towards 
us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ 
died for us.” 2 All the meaning of Christ’s life 
and death, with us and for us, hangs upon his 
being the true Son of God, the word of God, 
the brightness of the Father’s glory and the 
express image of his person. It is this that 
makes us sure that God is not a fierce, vindic- 
tive, relentless God. He is more than a ruler, 
a judge of all the earth, an almighty king. He 
is our friend, the lover of our souls. He is 
willing to live among us, to suffer with us, to 
die for us. 

The entire significance of Christ as a reve- 
lation of divine Love depends upon his real 
oneness with the Father, and the essential vol- 
untariness of his sacrifice. It is not a punish- 
ment inflicted from without, by the inexorable 
law of God. It is a revelation made from with- 
in, by the immeasurable love of God, showing 
mercy at the heart of righteousness. 

The faith in Christ’s divinity underlies the 
faith in his sacrifice as an expression of the kind- 

1 1 John 4 : 10. 2 Rom. 5 : 8. 

367 


CHRIST’S MISSION 


ness of God’s heart. It could not speak to us 
of the love of God unless the love of God were 
in it. Love is the light within the lantern. 
There would be no colour in the glass, the figure 
of the crucifix would be black and indistinguish- 
able, if it were not transfigured by that inner 
radiance. 

The love of God goes before the gift of Christ. 
“God so loved the world that he gave his only 
begotten Son.” He did not give his only be- 
gotten Son in order that he might learn to love 
the world. 

The love was expressed not only in the life, 
it was summed up and crowned in the death, 
of Christ. “Greater love hath no man than this, 
that a man lay down his life for his friends.” 

Love’s consummation is the cross. It is not 
intended to produce a change in the mind of 
God. It is intended to show what is already 
in the mind of God. It is not designed to make 
him feel differently towards men. It is designed 
to reveal what he has always felt. 

Men say that repentance is the condition of 
forgiveness. Only let a man repent of his sin, 
only let him be sorry for it, and hate it, and 
turn to God, crying for pardon, and he shall 
be forgiven. This is an inspiring view of the 
readiness of divine mercy. 

368 


TO THE INNER LIFE 

But the picture of Jesus in the soul, as it is 
drawn in the New Testament, goes far beyond 
the glory of this thought. It shows us that 
in Christ forgiveness is the creator of repen- 
tance. God is ready to forgive long before man 
is ready to repent. God gives his Son to die 
for us while we are yet sinners. At the heart 
of the gift lies the desire to make us sorry for 
our sins. “The goodness of God leadeth thee 
to repentance.” 1 To forgive is divine; that 
comes first. To repent is human; that follows 
afterward. 

In all the New Testament I can find no trace 
of the idea that Christ did anything, or needed 
to do anything, to make God love the world. 

There is a noble passage in the works of St. 
Augustine, which sets forth the true image 
of Christ as the expression of God’s readiness 
to forgive sins. “What is meant,” he asks, 
“by ‘being reconciled by the death of his Son’? 
Was it, indeed, so that when God the Father 
was angry with us he saw the death of his Son, 
and was appeased? Was, then, the Son al- 
ready so appeased towards us that he was 
willing to die for us; while the Father was so 
angry that unless the Son had died he would 
not have been appeased? What does it mean, 

1 Rom. 2 : 4. 

369 


CHRIST’S MISSION 

then, when the same teacher of the Gentiles 
says, in another place, ‘What shall we say to 
these things? If God be for us, who can be 
against us? He that spared not his own Son 
but freely delivered him up for us all, how has 
he not with him also freely given us all things ? 9 
Unless the Father had been already appeased 
would he have delivered up his own Son, not 
sparing him for us? Is there not a contradic- 
tion between these two views? In the former 
the Son dies for us, and the Father is reconciled 
by his death. In the latter the Father, as if 
out of love for us, does not spare the Son, but 
himself, for our sake, delivers him up to death. 
But I see that the Father loved us beforehand, 
— not only before the Son died, but also before 
the world was created, according to the testi- 
mony of the Apostle who says, ‘He hath chosen 
us in him before the foundation of the world/ 
Nor was the Son unwillingly offered, for it is 
said of him, ‘Who loved me, and gave himself 
for me.’ Therefore together, both the Father 
and the Son, and the Spirit of both, work all 
things at the same time equally and harmo- 
niously; yet we are justified in the blood of 
Christ, and we are reconciled to God by the 
death of his Son.” 

So stands the picture of Christ the mediator, 
370 


TO THE INNER LIFE 


the reconciler, as it is reflected in the soul of 
those who first trusted in him. 

His atonement does not reconcile God to the 
world. No need of that. God has loved the 
world forever. It does reconcile the world to 
God. Great need of that. For it breaks down 
the barrier of fear and mistrust; it rends the 
veil of dreadful dreams that sin has woven be- 
fore the divine face, and discloses the coun- 
tenance of a pitying, forgiving Father; it moves 
men to repentance by the mightiest force of 
mercy; it binds men to holy living by the en- 
during bonds of gratitude and love. 

3. But could the sacrifice of Christ have 
meant this much to the inner life of man unless 
it had also meant something more? Suppose 
for a moment that the disciples had thought 
that it was not really a necessary sacrifice; that 
there was no reason why he should suffer, ex- 
cept perhaps that his sufferings might move 
their hearts; that his death was nothing more 
than the accidental consequence of his being 
entangled in a world like this; that God could 
have forgiven sin and would have forgiven sin 
in just the same way if there had been no cruci- 
fixion on Calvary. What then ? Would Christ 
still have had the same atoning power to draw 
their hearts to God ? 


371 


CHRIST’S MISSION 


It is love that reconciles. And it is self-sacri- 
fice that reveals love. But does an unnecessary 
sacrifice, a useless sacrifice, reveal love in a 
way that moves and compels our hearts? No, 
the moment we perceive that an offered proof 
of love has no relation to our real needs, and 
is not intended to do us any real good, it loses 
its power upon us, becomes unreal and futile. 

Suppose, for example, that you are rowing a 
boat on a river, in no danger of any kind. A 
friend comes down to the shore and hails you; 
he tells you that he is about to show his devo- 
tion to you in a way that you cannot possibly 
doubt. He intends to give his life for you. So 
he throws himself into the water and is drowned. 
Are you impressed with gratitude and love ? Is 
the proof of devotion so manifest and indubi- 
table that you cannot resist it? Does it not 
seem more like a vain show of heroism, a dis- 
play made not so much for your sake as for 
the sake of him who made it? 

But if your boat had been sinking? Ah, 
then it would have been another matter. The 
man who gives up his life to rescue you from 
an actual peril, commands your love because 
he is your saviour. The crown of love is service. 
The glory of sacrifice is usefulness. The love 
of Christ, the sacrifice of Christ, draw their 
372 


TO THE INNER LIFE 


deepest power upon the inner life of man from 
the conviction they really have accomplished 
a deliverance for sinners from the guilt and 
curse and doom of sin. 

The first message that the disciples received 
from the risen Jesus, while their minds were 
still overwhelmed by the apparent tragedy of 
the crucifixion, was the truth that it was not a 
useless loss, but a fruitful gain. The subject 
of his conversation with the two sad-hearted 
disciples on the road to Emmaus, — sad because 
they could not see why it was necessary for 
Christ to die, — the theme of his talk with them 
was the need of his death. “ Ought not Christ 
to have suffered these things and to have en- 
tered into his glory?” 

How much the first Apostles, who had been 
with Jesus from the beginning, who had loved 
him and trusted that he was the promised Re- 
deemer of Israel, — how much these men needed 
this gospel of a real victory in his death, we 
who have always heard it, even though we may 
not have believed it, can hardly realize. Think 
what it must have meant to see the holy and 
loving Master die upon the cross. What 
a crushing catastrophe, what an inexplicable 
tragedy, what an irreparable loss for the world ! 
How was it possible to have any trust in the 
373 


CHRIST’S MISSION 


wisdom and goodness of a God who would per- 
mit such a cruel disaster ? How was it possible 
to have any hope for a humanity which had no 
other use for the perfect life than to blot it out 
in anguish and disgrace ? Faith itself must have 
died with Christ, unless it had been able to 
discover a meaning, a purpose, a necessity, a 
triumph in his death great enough to make it 
the accomplishment of all that he had lived 
for. A bitter waste, or an unspeakable gain: 
those were the alternatives in the cross. 

One would think that the words of Jesus 
while he was with the disciples had been clear 
enough to show them which was the true ex- 
planation. He had spoken of his death as in- 
evitable; he had moved forward to it as the 
fulfilment of his mission; he had interpreted 
it as an infinite benefit to his disciples. “The 
Son of man came to give his life a ransom for 
many.” “The bread that I will give is my 
flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” 
“Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground 
and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it 
bringeth forth much fruit.” “I, if I be lifted 
up, will draw all men unto me.” “This cup is 
the New Covenant in my blood which is shed 
for many for the remission of sins.” 

But the meaning of these words was with- 
held from their eyes. They did not dare, they 
374 


TO THE INNER LIFE 


were not willing to look the fact of Christ’s 
coming death in the face, as he did. So its sig- 
nificance escaped them. It needed the lifting 
up of the cross, it needed the vision of the Mas- 
ter’s death, to make them realize the true alter- 
native. 

On Calvary all was lost, — unless, on Calvary 
all was won ! The disciples stood between 
utter despair and immeasurable hope. The 
risen Lord came back to tell them that all was 
won by the needful sacrifice of the cross. That 
is the testimony of the first Apostles. 

Paul’s testimony comes out of a different 
experience but leads to the same result. He 
had been an unbeliever in Jesus, a hater and 
a persecutor of the Nazarene. To him the man 
of Nazareth had appeared as a false prophet, 
a blasphemer. He found no fault with the 
death of Jesus from that point of view. It was 
not only necessary; it was desirable. Paul 
would have willingly consented to it, if he had 
been in the palace of Caiaphas, and in the judg- 
ment-hall of Pilate, and on the hill called Gol- 
gotha. 

But when Paul was overwhelmingly con- 
vinced that he was wrong in his judgment of 
the Nazarene, his old point of view was utterly 
destroyed. 

From the moment on the Damascus road 
375 


CHRIST’S MISSION 


when Paul saw that the crucified Jesus whom 
he had been persecuting was not a heretic Jew, 
justly slain for his blasphemies, but the true 
and living Christ of God, — from that moment 
it became absolutely necessary for him to find 
a new interpretation of the cross. He never 
dreamed that it could be regarded as a mere 
incident, a needless sacrifice, a disastrous close 
of a beautiful life. It must be an essential ele- 
ment, an indispensable factor in the mission 
of the Messiah. It must complete the revela- 
tion of God which was made in him. It must 
be the corner-stone of that divine kingdom 
which he came to establish. 

This was the starting-point of Paul’s theol- 
ogy. While he thought that Jesus was not 
the Christ, he saw in the death on the cross 
nothing but the punishment of the folly and 
falsehood of the Nazarene. As soon as he was 
convinced that Jesus really was the Christ, 
the death on the cross was transformed into 
the revelation of the righteousness and love of 
God. There was no other alternative. The 
sinless one, the glorious one, did not die for 
sins of his own. He could not have died in 
vain. Therefore he must have died for us. 
God was manifest in him reconciling the world 
unto himself. 


376 


TO THE INNER LIFE 


This was certainly the interpretation which 
the Christians put upon the death of their Lord 
and Master on the cross. This was the effect 
that it actually wrought in their inner life. 
They did not deem it an accident, nor a catas- 
trophe. It was not the defeat, nor merely the 
termination, of his work. It was the crown 
and consummation of his work. It gave Christ 
to them more than it took him from them. 
They did not think that he died for naught. 
His death for sinners was the greatest service 
that love could perform. It accomplished and 
declared God’s righteousness in the remission 
of sins that are past. It made it possible for 
God to be just and the justifier of him who be- 
lie veth in Jesus. 

The Apostles did not teach that forgiveness 
could not have taken place without the cruci- 
fixion of Christ. They kept within the horizon 
of experience. They testified of what they 
knew, and bore witness of what they had 
seen. 

They simply taught that, without the death 
of Christ, forgiveness would not have been 
what it is. They taught it because they felt 
it. They did not dream that the tragedy of 
the cross made any change in God. But they 
were sure that it made a change in the relation 
377 


CHRIST’S MISSION 


of the sinful world to God. It took away the 
curse of the law. It blotted out the handwrit- 
ing of ordinances. It redeemed us. It brought 
us near to God. It put away sin. It cleansed 
us from sin in the blood of Christ. It is the 
one offering by which Christ hath perfected 
them that are sanctified. 

Now, what were the secret laws and what 
were the mysterious relations of the world to 
God which made this offering of the sinless life 
of Jesus necessary for the rescue of mankind 
from sin, no man knoweth, nor can any man 
explain them and set them in order. But their 
existence does not depend upon our knowledge 
of them. Nor is the satisfaction of them ren- 
dered unreal by our ignorance of the way in 
which they are satisfied. If God is such a being 
as the moral ruler of the universe must be, it 
is not to be expected that we should be able 
to fathom the necessities which are present to 
his mind. There must be a world of eternal 
laws and wants and needs lying about us of 
which we can form no adequate conception. 
Into this world Christ entered by his death. 
Whatever was needed there for the forgiveness 
and blotting out of man’s sin he provided. 
Whatever the law required for its righteous 
vindication he performed. It was the Father’s 
378 


TO THE INNER LIFE 


will that he should die to redeem men; and 
so he died, and men were redeemed. 

Thus the atonement appears in the New 
Testament. Not only from the side of man, 
but also from the side of God, it is the supremely 
necessary, and the supremely successful, peace- 
making sacrifice. “Therefore, being justified by 
faith, we have peace with God through our 
Lord Jesus Christ.” 


IV 

NEWNESS OF LIFE 

What forgiveness would have been without 
Christ (if it were possible), no man knows. 

What forgiveness is in Christ, what it means 
to “have redemption through his blood, even 
the forgiveness of sins,” — this is the gospel 
that rings like music through the whole New 
Testament. It is inward peace, and secret 
joy, and newness of life. 

An experience like this cannot possibly be 
expressed in any language that is fixed and 
formal. It must utter itself in vital speech 
because it is a vital experience. The attempt 
to transform any of the glowing words which 
the Apostles use to describe it into an abstract, 
scientific definition inevitably results in a mis- 
379 


CHRIST’S MISSION 


representation. The attempt to interpret any 
of the terms which are associated with the ex- 
perience of atonement as if they described legal 
transactions or artificial adjustments destroys 
their real significance as utterances of conscious 
life. 

Take, for example, Paul’s famous phrase, 
“ justified by faith.” Suppose we attempt to 
define that by making it mean that the guilt 
of the sinner has been legally transferred to 
Christ, and the merits of Christ have been 
legally transferred to the sinner; so that Christ 
on the cross is declared guilty and is punished 
for sin, while the sinner, believing, is pronounced 
righteous and escapes from punishment. What 
effect would such an idea of the atonement 
have upon the inner life? Apart from the 
frightful confusion which it must introduce 
into the moral sense to think of God as the 
author of such an arrangement, what conceiv- 
able influence of a real and permanent nature 
could such a thought have upon the soul ? Does 
it bring inward happiness to a man’s heart to 
be pronounced righteous when he knows that 
he is still unrighteous? Does it give a man 
inward peace to be set free from punishment 
when he is conscious that the evils which de- 
served it are still within him ? Does it reconcile 
380 


TO THE INNER LIFE 


a man’s inner life with God to have the right- 
eousness of another person attributed to him 
by a legal fiction, while his own soul is still out 
of harmony with God? 

Merely to put these questions is to answer 
them. No; if Christ’s mission is to the inner 
life, then his work in the inner life must be real 
and vital. In this region there is no room for 
anything that is merely formal and artificial. 
There is no room for what Phillips Brooks calls 
“the fantastic conception of the imputation to 
Christ of a sinfulness which was not his, of 
God’s counting him guilty of wickedness which 
he had never done.” There is no legal fiction 
in the real atonement. God is not a maker of 
fiction, nor can the inner life of man be satis- 
fied with formalities. The human heart revolts 
at the idea of the punishment of the innocent 
in the place of the guilty. Those instincts which 
lie deeper than all reasoning, are insulted and 
wounded by the thought of the arbitrary trans- 
fer of the merits of one person to the credit of 
another person. The moral sense could never 
find peace in the contemplation of such a purely 
forensic transaction. 

But the testimony of the Apostles is that 
their moral sense, their conscience, actually 
did find peace through the atonement as they 
381 


CHRIST’S MISSION 


believed in it. “ Justification by faith,” as 
they use the words, must therefore mean some- 
thing very different from the definition which 
has sometimes been given to it. It must mean 
that righteousness is not merely imputed, but 
actually imparted through faith. It must mean 
that sinners are not merely declared just, but 
actually made just, by Christ’s work as the 
Saviour. It is not justification of law, it is 
“justification of life.” 1 

There is not a single passage in the New 
Testament where the merits of one person are 
transferred, or reckoned, or counted to another. 
But there are a hundred passages where the 
righteousness and obedience of Christ are 
spoken of as the source of a new righteous- 
ness, a new obedience in us. “How much more 
shall the blood of Christ purge your conscience 
from dead works to serve the living God .” 2 
“Elect according to the foreknowledge of God 
the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, 
unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of 
Christ .” 3 “Our Saviour Jesus Christ, who 
gave himself for us that he might redeem us 
from all iniquity and purify unto himself a 
peculiar people, zealous of good works.” 4 “If 


1 Rom. 5 : 18. 
3 1 Pet. 1 : 2. 


382 


2 Heb. 9 : 14. 
4 Titus 2 : 14. 


TO THE INNER LIFE 


we walk in the light as he is in the light, we 
have fellowship one with another, and the blood 
of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all 
sin.” 1 

What, then, does Paul mean when he says 
that “faith is counted for righteousness ”? 2 
He means not that faith is taken in the place 
of righteousness, as if it were enough for a man 
to believe that Christ was holy without making 
any effort to attain to holiness himself. He 
means that faith is regarded as an actual be- 
ginning of righteousness, a seed of divine 
promise and power in the soul of man, to be 
unfolded, by the grace of God, into a holy life. 
He means that there is infinitely more hope 
and potency of goodness in the man who trusts 
in God’s mercy to save him, and in God’s holi- 
ness to purify him, and in God’s grace to make 
him righteous, than there is in the man who 
tries to work out salvation in his own strength 
according to the law. This is Paul’s personal 
consciousness of the atonement. It is not the 
peace of death: it is the peace of new life joined 
to God. It involves a spiritual crucifixion with 
Christ unto sin. It involves also a real resurrec- 
tion with Christ unto righteousness. “ There- 
fore we are buried with him by baptism into 

2 Rom. 4 : 5. 


1 1 John 1 : 7. 


383 


CHRIST’S MISSION 


death, that like as Christ was raised up from 
the dead by the glory of the Father, even so 
we should walk in newness of life.” 1 

Newness of life , — new hopes, new powers, 
new inspiration, new courage, — that is the 
practical side of regeneration. And that, ac- 
cording to the New Testament, is the result of 
the atonement which Christ brings into the 
inner life of man. 

Paul was certainly the one writer among the 
Apostles who took the most legal point of view 
in considering the work of Christ. His tem- 
perament, his training, inclined him to this 
method of thought and expression. He was 
the lawyer of the gospel. But Paul never for 
a moment dreamed that his forensic figures 
of speech exhausted or limited the meaning of 
the gospel. 

Nothing could be more absurd, more false 
to the facts, than to make the message of Paul 
a mere gospel of escape from the law by belief 
in the vicarious sacrifice of Christ. Such a 
view of his gospel would make it and keep it 
a purely legal gospel. Satisfaction of the law 
would be still its main theme and motive. It 
would differ from the religion of the Pharisees 
only in the way in which it proposed to satisfy 

1 Rom. 6 : 4. 

384 


TO THE INNER LIFE 


the law. It would present a view of justification 
based upon a different ground indeed, but which 
in its results, if they did not go beyond escape 
from the law, would be just as incomplete, just 
as formal, just as dead, as justification by works. 

Paul’s message was certainly a gospel of 
escape from the law; but it was that because 
it was something infinitely more. It was the 
gospel of escape into life . 

This was the new birth that came to him 
when he saw Christ. In the old life his chief 
concern had been to fulfil the demands of the 
law; and that was not really a life at all; it 
was a kind of death, not only because it was a 
hopeless struggle, but also because it was a 
subordination of the inward to the outward, 
of the vital to the formal, of the spirit to the 
letter. In the new life Paul felt that he was 
set free from the task of fulfilling the law, not 
merely because Christ had satisfied all its con- 
ceivable demands, but also because Christ had 
brought him into an utterly different relation 
to God; not outward, but inward; not formal, 
but vital; not artificial, but spiritual. 

Paul’s message was more than a doctrine of 
law satisfied in Christ. It was a proclamation 
of life begun in Christ. There was as much 
righteousness in this new life as there was in 
385 


CHRIST’S MISSION 


the old law. But it was a new kind of right- 
eousness. Certainly it was not a fictitious kind 
of righteousness, a mere legal justification, a 
formal transfer of the merits of Christ, by some 
mysterious decree of a supreme court, to the 
credit of the believer. It was a real righteous- 
ness, living and working itself out in the life 
of man. But it differed from the old righteous- 
ness in two things. First, in its origin: it was 
not human, but divine; and therefore it must 
be received by faith. Second, in its operation: 
it was not conformity to a rule, but guidance 
by the Spirit; and therefore it must be per- 
fected by love. 

Paul’s teaching amounts to this. We are 
not saved through law; we are saved through 
life. Life does not mean outward obedience. 
That is only the shell of life. Real life means 
faith and hope and love. The only source of 
this life is in God. Christ alone brings this 
life near to us, makes it accessible, sweeps away 
all hindrances, and invites us to enter into it 
by giving ourselves entirely to him. To live, 
according to Paul, means to believe in Christ, 
to hope in Christ, and to love Christ, because 
he is the human life of God, “ delivered for our 
offences and raised again for our justification.” 1 

1 Rom. 4 : 25. 

386 


TO THE INNER LIFE 


Mark well the words. Why “ raised again 
for our justification” ? If the taking away of 
our sins means only the release from their 
punishment because he has borne them upon 
the cross, then his resurrection makes no differ- 
ence in the result. If our justification means 
only the imputation of the merit of his obedience 
and the value of his sacrifice to our account, 
then his rising again from the dead has nothing 
to do with it. Everything would be secure, 
whether he rose, or whether he did not rise. 

Why “ raised again for our justification”? 
Because the taking away of our sins means an 
actual separation from sin by union with the 
crucified Christ. Because our justification 
means a living entrance into his righteousness 
in the risen life. The mission of Christ to the 
inner life was just this: to make such an atone- 
ment that sin should no more divide the soul 

from God: to make such an atonement that 

the broken law should no more keep the soul 
at enmity with God: to make such an atone- 
ment that the inner life of all who truly live, 

should be “not unto themselves, but unto him 
who died for them and rose again.” 


387 


y 


THE FULNESS OF ATONEMENT 



TONEMENT is the word that seems best 


1 V fitted to express the meaning of the gospel 
of Christ in relation to a world of sin. I have 
used it thus far without defining it, for three 
reasons. 

First, because a final definition is impossible. 
The work of Christ for the saving of sinners 
can never be confined within the phrases which 
men invent to describe what they can see of 
it. It overflows the boundaries. Its fulness 
makes it indefinable. 

Second, because the very attempt to define 
it has so often led to misconception and strife 
between men who believed in it with equal 
sincerity. I have read many books on the 
atonement. If the titles and references were 
given here, they would fill several pages. In 
almost all of these books I have found truth; 
in none of them the whole truth. The writers 
have helped me most when they have expressed 
their own experience of the saving power of 


388 


THE FULNESS OF ATONEMENT 


Christ. They have helped me least when they 
have been making definitions to shut out and 
condemn the views of other writers. Yet even 
in this they have not been altogether unprofit- 
able. An attack upon a book has often led me 
to read it sympathetically, and so to discover 
in it a new source of illumination, a new testi- 
mony of experience. 

The third reason why I have not tried to 
give a definition of the atonement is because 
it is not needed. The word is clear enough 
and plain enough already. It denotes a cer- 
tain mystery, — the entire work of Christ in 
reuniting man to God, — the perfect result of 
that work in the establishment of peace be- 
tween man and God, — the redeeming relation 
of that work to human sin, — the satisfying re- 
lation of that work to divine righteousness, — 
it denotes a mystery, but it denotes it in lan- 
guage which brings it into analogy with things 
that we know, and throws upon it light enough 
to enable us to see at least some of its essential 
elements. 

What is this word, atonement , and where does 
it come from ? It comes directly out of human 
life and experience. It is derived from an older 
word, “ onement ” which means unity or con- 
cord. To set two persons or things “at one- 
389 


THE FULNESS OF ATONEMENT 


ment” means to bring them together in har- 
mony after discord. Atonement is simply the 
process, or the result of reuniting and reconcil- 
ing those who have been separated. Thus, in 
Shakespeare’s Richard III , Buckingham says 
to the Queen: 

“Ay, madame; he desires to make atonement 
Between the Duke of Gloster and your brothers .” 

From this original and broadest meaning, the 
word is sometimes narrowed a little to denote 
some particular action or offering by which the 
reconciliation is effected. It may come either 
from one of the separated parties, or from a 
third person who offers himself as a reconciler. 
But in any case three elements must always 
enter into the idea of an atonement. 

First, the motive of it must be love. It can- 
not possibly spring from any other cause. Jus- 
tice, or righteousness, or authority, — and least 
of all anger or hate, — would never account for 
the desire of making a reconciliation. It can 
only come from a sincere love for the persons 
to be reconciled, and an earnest wish that they 
shall love each other. 

Second, the condition under which this love 
works is the sense of a present separation, aris- 
ing out of a fault, an offence, which has created 
390 


THE FULNESS OF ATONEMENT 


a real obstacle between the persons who are 
separated. 

Third, the purpose which this love has in 
view is a real state of harmpny, in which the 
persons who are to be brought together shall 
be vitally at one. 

These, then, are the three marks of all atone- 
ment. Its creative cause is the power of love. 
Its occasional cause is the recognition of an 
offence. Its final cause is the restoration of 
vital union. 

Atonements have been going on in the world 
from the beginning; between man and man, 
and between man and God. Those who have 
been conscious of injury and offence against 
their fellow-men have been trying to make 
some reparation, to show some contrition for 
the wrong, and to reestablish peace. Those 
who have been grieved at the prevalence of 
enmity and strife among their friends have 
been trying to bring about reconciliation, by 
mediating between the offended and the offender. 

This mediation involves suffering and sacri- 
fice on the part of the peacemaker. It is hardly 
possible to obtain forgiveness and love for a 
guilty person without bearing something of his 
pain and punishment. Many a father has suf- 
fered for the sake of making peace among his 
391 


THE FULNESS OF ATONEMENT 

children who were at strife. Many a mother 
has borne not only grief, but also actual trouble 
and loss, for the sake of reconciling a rebellious 
boy to an offended father. Many a brother 
has shared the disgrace and paid the debts of 
a brother for the sake of bringing him back into 
the harmony of the social order. And in such 
sufferings of love for the cause of atonement 
there is always something which propitiates the 
heart and inclines it to show favour. The 
father’s compassion towards an erring son is 
always quickened by the thought of the moth- 
er’s love as expressed in sacrifice. The senti- 
ment of society, which after all is the final 
earthly court of appeal in all questions of con- 
duct, is certainly affected favourably towards 
an offender by the fact that an innocent friend 
is willing to stand beside him and share in 
some degree the consequences of his fault. All 
this is of the nature of atonement, and there is 
no corner of the world where the letters of this 
word may not be spelled out, like a dim and 
broken inscription, on the fragments of human 
life. 

The same word runs through the history of 
religion from the beginning until now. Sacri- 
fice is another way of spelling it; and sacrifice 
is primitive and universal. 

392 


THE FULNESS OF ATONEMENT 


“Both for themselves and those who call 
them friend” men have not only prayed, but 
also presented gifts and offerings to God, in 
the desire to take away the obstacle of sin and 
reconcile the human heart to him. 

Atonement is spoken of in the Old Testament 
in many places. It is said that an atonement 
was made when Moses interceded for the people 
at Sinai , 1 when Aaron burned incense in the 
midst of the congregation , 2 when Phinehas 
executed judgment on Zimri , 3 and when Nehe- 
miah established ordinances in the restored 
city of Jerusalem . 4 The Hebrew word which 
is used in these passages, and in many others 
where some form of the verb “to atone” occurs 
in our English version, is from a root which 
means “to cover.” It carries with it the idea 
of guilt which needs to be expiated. But the 
object of the expiation is the renewal of fellow- 
ship between man and God. Sacrifice has this 
twofold meaning. The slaying of the victim 
is the confession that sin deserves punishment. 
The offering of the blood, which is the sign of 
the life, is the utterance of the worshipper’s 
desire to return into union with God. 

Now all these kinds of atonement, which men 


1 Ex. 32 : 30. 

» Num. 25 : 13. 


393 


2 Num. 16 : 46. 
4 Neh. 10 : 33. 


THE FULNESS OF ATONEMENT 


have been making through the centuries, and 
are making still, are but shadows and reflections 
of the great work which Christ came to do for 
a sinful world. Its purpose and design, its na- 
ture and conditions, the depth of its motive 
and the breadth of its scope, cannot be ex- 
pressed by any lesser, narrower, more precise 
word. 

It takes up into itself the significance of all 
sincere and pure sacrifices which have been 
offered on human altars, visible and invisible. 
Christ is the eternal embodiment of the sacri- 
ficial spirit . 1 

It utters the great peace-making desire of 
all those blessed human mediators who have 
laboured and suffered to bring together divided 
hearts and to restore harmony between dis- 
cordant lives . 2 In this light it reveals Christ 
as standing between God and man, and touch- 
ing both the human and the divine. 

It is the perfect consummation of all those 
imperfect offerings which have been made in 
behalf of those who are guilty, to propitiate 
One who has a right to be offended with them. 
In this sense Christ appears as the High Priest 
of sinful and repentant humanity . 3 

It is the divine interpretation and consecra- 

1 Heb. 9:26. 2 E p h. 2 : 14-18. * Heb. 10 : 10-14. 

394 


THE FULNESS OF ATONEMENT 


tion of all those royal acts of compassion and 
mercy in which men and women who have been 
sinned against have expressed their forgiveness 
and sought to win their enemies back to peace. 
In this aspect Christ is revealed as the incarnate 
love of God, coming forth from the bosom of 
the Father, to seek and to save his lost chil- 
dren . 1 

No word which fails to cover all these mean- 
ings, no word which sharply emphasises one 
side of the truth at the expense of the other 
sides, no word which leaves out of its signifi- 
cance the sweetness of any of those things most 
“pure and lovely and of good report” which 
have been done in the spirit of reconciliation, 
is broad enough to describe the work of Christ 
in closing the gulf which sin had made between 
man and God. Sacrifice is not broad enough. 
Mediation is not broad enough. Propitiation 
is not broad enough. Redemption is not broad 
enough. Substitution is not broad enough. 
Satisfaction is not broad enough. Embracing 
all these things, Christ’s work goes beyond 
them all. It is simply the fulness of atone- 
ment. 

The word occurs but once in the English 
version of the New Testament, in a passage 

1 1 John 3 : 16. 

395 


THE FULNESS OF ATONEMENT 


-where St. Paul declares that “we joy in God 
through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we 
have now received the atonement.” 1 But the 
same Greek noun which is here rendered “atone- 
ment,” occurs again in a later verse, where he 
speaks of “the reconciling of the world,” 2 and 
in a still more important passage of another 
epistle, where he describes the gospel as “the 
word of the reconciliation,” and the preacher’s 
work as “the ministry of the reconciliation.” 3 
The translation should be made uniform in all 
three places. Then we should have “the atone- 
ment of the world,” “the word of the atone- 
ment,” and “the ministry of the atonement.” 

This would prepare us to appreciate the full 
force of another passage in which we find, not 
the noun, but the verb from which it is derived, 
in an intensive form which gives it new value, 
and in a connection which seems to pour fresh 
light upon it from all sides of human experi- 
ence. The classic passage on the atonement is 
in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Colos- 
sians, and the central idea of it is in the twen- 
tieth verse, in which St. Paul declares that it 
pleased the Father, by Christ, “to atone all 
things with himself; by him, I say, whether 
they be things in earth, or things iix heaven.” 

1 Rom. 5 : 11. 2 Rom. 11 : 15. *2 Cor. 5 : 18, 19. 

•396 


THE FULNESS OF ATONEMENT 


Go backward and forward from this point, and 
see how many meanings converge in St. Paul’s 
idea of the great atonement. Deliverance from 
the power of darkness ; 1 redemption through 
Christ’s blood, even the forgiveness of sins ; 2 a 
new birth from the dead ; 3 peace-making by 
the cross ; 4 the winning back of enemies ; 5 the 
taking away of blame and reproof ; 6 the inter- 
pretation of human sufferings in fellowship 
with the afflictions of Christ ; 7 and finally the 
making known of the riches of the glory of a 
mystery, “ which is Christ in you, the hope of 
glory .” 8 This, indeed, is atonement made per- 
fect. 

The perfection of it lies in the fulness and 
clearness with which it embodies and expresses 
the three essential elements of all lesser atone- 
ments. Its purpose is a true, deep, eternal 
harmony of spirit between man and God, a 
peace which the world can neither give nor 
take away. Its condition of operative power 
is a full acknowledgment of the immense ob- 
stacle which sin has put between man and God. 
Its motive is pure and perfect love, — the love 
which meets all needs as man feels them in 
his repentant heart, — the love which passeth 

1 vs. 13. a vs. 14. s vs. 18. 4 vs. 20. 

5 vs. 21. « vs. 22. 7 vs. 24. 8 vs. 27. 

397 


THE FULNESS OF ATONEMENT 


knowledge in its power to cover the whole mys- 
tery of sin as it is known to God alone. 

I 

THE LOVE THAT MEETS ALL NEEDS 

There is no truly Christian view of the atone- 
ment which does not begin with the love of 
God. This love involves the primal purpose 
of self-revelation, of union with man, of a divine 
incarnation. There is a gospel, a promise of 
God’s communication of himself to man, in the 
very act of creation. “The faith of the atone- 
ment presupposes the faith of the incarnation.” 

If this be true, it follows that we may be- 
lieve that the Son of God would have come 
into the world whether man had sinned or not. 
God has chosen and loved mankind in his Son 
before the foundation of the world. There is 
a profound truth in the saying of Robertson 
of Brighton, “God’s idea of humanity is, and 
ever was , humanity as it is in Jesus Christ.” 

Atonement, therefore, is the form which is 
given to the incarnation by the presence of sin 
in the world. Christ would have come to us 
as the revealer of the divine love, even though 
the world had never been separated from God. 
But because the separation had actually taken 
398 


THE FULNESS OF ATONEMENT 


place, because man had offended against God, 
and departed from his ideal, and fallen into 
enmity with him, Christ must reveal the divine 
love as a suffering love, a sacrificial love, a 
reconciling love, in order to bring man back 
to God. 

This atoning form of incarnation appears to 
us more glorious, more wonderful, than any 
other form, because it costs more. It is love 
put to the test. It is love overcoming obstacles. 
It is love militant and victorious. And its per- 
fection is manifest in the freedom and fulness 
with which it meets all the needs imposed by 
the fact of sin. 

Our consciousness of these needs is the 
measure of our power to understand the atone- 
ment. But beyond this consciousness there is 
another region wherein the results of evil, the 
disorders which it has introduced into the world, 
surpass our comprehension. In that region we 
cannot fully understand the atonement. We 
can only accept it, and rest upon it, as a great 
fact through which the concord of an untuned 
universe is restored, and infinite mercy is har- 
monized with infinite justice in the redemptive 
government of the world. 

In music there are notes too high and too 
low for us to hear. But the chord which fills 
399 


THE FULNESS OF ATONEMENT 


the range of our hearing with harmony must 
be harmonious also in the undertones and over- 
tones. Our faith in the unmeasured values of 
the atonement in the spheres beyond our ken 
is inseparably connected with an experience of 
its active power to meet our conscious wants 
as sinful men. 

What are these wants? They spring from 
the four elements which are present in the sense 
of sin, — the shame of impurity, the pain of 
bondage, the apprehension of guilt, and the 
hope of mercy. To these four elements, and 
to the needs which arise out of them, there are 
four things in the atonement which correspond, 
— a power to cleanse the soul, a power to lib- 
erate the life, a power to satisfy the law, and a 
power to reveal forgiveness. And these four 
things are spoken of in the New Testament 
under four principal expressions, — a sin-offer- 
ing ; 1 a ransom ; 2 a satisfaction, the payment 
of a debt ; 3 and a reconciliation . 4 

There is a famous passage in Coleridge’s 
Aids to Reflection in which he explains that 
these expressions are figures of speech, which 
do not describe the real nature of the atone- 

1 Heb. 9 : 19-28; 1 John 1 : 7; Rev. 1 : 5. 

2 1 Tim. 2 : 6; Gal. 4 : 5; Eph. 1 : 7; Col. 1 : 14. 

8 Gal. 5:3; 2 Cor. 5 : 21; 1 Pet. 3 : 18. 

4 Eph. 2 : 14, 16; 2 Tim. 2 : 5. 

400 


THE FULNESS OF ATONEMENT 


ment, but only illustrate “the nature and ex- 
tent of the consequences and effects of the 
atonement, and excite in the receivers a due 
sense of the magnitude and manifold operation 
of the boon, and of the love and gratitude due 
to the Redeemer.” 

I should accept the positive part of Cole- 
ridge’s explanation, but I should reject the 
negative part of it. 

Undoubtedly these metaphors are intended 
to express the great benefits which sinners re- 
ceive from the atoning work of Christ. They 
describe the results which it produces in the 
consciousness of man, — a sense of cleansing 
from defilement, a sense of deliverance from 
slavery, a sense of being right with the law, 
and a sense of God’s willingness to pardon. 
These are subjective effects. They are within 
us. But do they not belong to the real nature* 
and intention of the atonement ? Are they 
not clear indications of its purpose and mean- 
ing? Is not this complete reconciliation with 
God, in spite of sin, precisely what it was in- 
tended to accomplish? Are not these conse- 
quences in man’s spiritual consciousness just 
as real, just as veritable, as any other conse- 
quences that we can imagine? 

The atonement, as has been said, “is the 
401 


THE FULNESS OF ATONEMENT 


meeting-point of the objective and subjective 
elements of Christianity.” It covers all the 
ground that lies between God and man, so far 
as sin has touched it. It has a reference to 
every element of the divine nature which con- 
demns sin, and to every element of human na- 
ture which is affected by sin. It acts directly 
upon the divine will and upon the human will. 
There is no possible metaphor, drawn from any 
real relation of man to God, which is without 
its value in illustrating the real nature of the 
atonement. 

So far, then, from denying the verity of these 
four figures of speech, we should accept them 
as expressions of substantial truth. We should 
seek to make them as real and living as possible 
in our own experience. And we should go back 
to the New Testament to see if there are not 
other metaphors of the atonement which fit in 
with our consciousness of need as sinners. 

There are four other figures of speech, less 
familiar, and less frequently used, which throw 
new light upon the subject. They are used by 
Christ himself to describe the effects of his 
sacrifice. It would be well if they were taken 
more deeply into our conception of the atone- 
ment. 

The first figure is the metaphor of germina- 
402 


THE FULNESS OF ATONEMENT 


tion. “ Except a corn of wheat fall into the 
ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, 
it bringeth forth much fruit.” 1 This means 
that Christ’s death is the means of communi- 
cating new life — pure, holy, immortal — to the 
souls of men. It answers to the need which 
springs out of the shame of sin as the conscious 
deadening of the higher life. 

The second figure is the metaphor of vicari- 
ous suffering. “I am the good shepherd: the 
good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.” 2 
This means that because Christ loves us, and 
has identified himself with us, he is willing to 
die for us in order to rescue us from sin, the rob- 
ber of our souls. It is another aspect of redemp- 
tion, the ransom of a life willingly laid down for 
others in the conflict with evil. It answers to 
the painful sense of helplessness in our strug- 
gles to escape from sin. It is the voice of the 
victor who stands by the vanquished and prom- 
ises deliverance. 

The third figure is the metaphor of conse- 
cration. “For their sakes I sanctify myself, 
that they also might be sanctified through the 
truth .” 3 This means that Christ’s death is 
the completion of his holy obedience to God. 
It is more than the payment of a debt exacted 

1 St. John. 12 : 24. 2 St. John 10 : 11. 3 St. John 17 : 19. 

403 


THE FULNESS OF ATONEMENT 


by the law. It is the fulfilment of a service 
prompted by love. “Lo, I come to do thy will, 
O God.” 1 And so it becomes in us the spirit 
of a new obedience. 

The fourth figure is the metaphor of a new 
covenant of pardon. “This is my blood of the 
new covenant, which is shed for many for the 
remission of sins.” 2 This means that Christ’s 
death is the seal of God’s entering into a new 
engagement with us, not of works, but of grace, 
in which he will deal with us as a father, for- 
giving our sins for his name’s sake. An ancient 
covenant was always sealed with blood. But 
it was not made on account of the blood. That 
was simply the sign of the solemnity and bind- 
ing force of the engagement. The covenant 
itself rested upon the willingness of both par- 
ties to enter into it and to keep it. Christ’s 
death does not make God willing to forgive. 
It reveals his forgiveness as ready and waiting 
for us to claim it. 

Now take these four latter metaphors of the 
effects of the atonement in its relation to us, 
and lay them beside the four others which are 
more familiarly employed. See how they mu- 
tually illuminate one another, and how the 
light which comes from each reminds us that 

1 Heb. 10 : 9. 2 St. Matt. 26 : 28. 

404 


THE FULNESS OF ATONEMENT 


no one of them can be interpreted alone as the 
secret of “the true doctrine of atonement.” 

There is a sacrificial element in it, assuredly. 
It is an offering for sin. But it is not in any 
sense an offering which is separate from us. It 
is implanted in us, in our human nature, as a 
seed is planted in the earth, to germinate and 
bear fruit. 

There was a substitution on Calvary. But 
it was not the substitution of a sinless Christ 
for a sinful race. It was the substitution of 
humanity with Christ, for humanity without 
Christ. He bore our sins, not apart from us, 
but with us. He expressed, in his willing sub- 
mission to the death of the cross, the ideal and 
representative repentance of mankind for sin. 
And this sacrifice is the sufficient atonement 
for the original sin of the whole race. He is 
joined by his cross to every sinful soul that 
repents of actual sin, and thus there is no fur- 
ther need of sacrifice, since the offering of Christ 
abides forever and germinates in each heart 
that believes in him. To be crucified with 
Christ is to feel the guilt of sin in like manner 
(though never in like degree) as he felt it. It 
is to acknowledge the righteousness of the law 
which condemns sin, even as he acknowledged 
405 


THE FULNESS OF ATONEMENT 


it by suffering with the race which lay under 
condemnation. It is to present to God, by 
faith, our lesser sacrifices of a broken and a 
contrite spirit, not now standing alone in their 
imperfection, but purified and made precious 
by union with that perfect sacrifice in which 
Jesus Christ poured out his soul unto death. 

There is also a redemptive element in the 
atonement, undoubtedly. It is a ransom which 
emancipates us from the tyranny of evil. But 
it is not, as the patristic writers imagined, a 
ransom paid to the devil. There is no trace 
of such an idea in the New Testament. It is, 
as Christ himself teaches us, a victory over the 
evil one. It is our ransom, just as the death of 
a heroic leader who conquers in a good cause 
and in conquering dies, is the ransom of his 
people from defeat and slavery. The liberating 
power of Christ’s death for us is never to be 
separated from his spiritual victory over evil, 
nor from the courage which it inspires in our 
hearts to know that we have such a mighty, 
faithful, triumphant Shepherd. 

There is also an element of satisfaction to 
the righteous law in the atonement, undoubt- 
edly. Christ fulfilled all that the law of God 
406 


THE FULNESS OF ATONEMENT 

required. He paid the debt of righteousness 
to the full. But the emphasis in this satisfac- 
tion is not to be laid exclusively, nor chiefly, 
upon his sufferings, but upon his holiness, upon 
his willing and complete obedience to the Father 
in all things. As St. Bernard said, Non mors, 
sed voluntas placuit sponte morientis . 

The value and meaning of Christ’s atone- 
ment as a satisfaction depend upon the con- 
nection of his sufferings and death with his 
perfect life. It was “the mind that was in 
Christ Jesus” that made him “obedient unto 
death, even the death of the cross.” 1 That 
mind of obedience was the priceless jewel worth 
more than enough to pay the whole debt of 
righteousness. 

The truth of this view is self-evident. How 
can we think of it in any other way ? Suppose 
for a moment that Christ had died in infancy. 
Suppose that instead of escaping into Egypt 
with the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph, the babe 
Jesus had been slain with the other children of 
Bethlehem. His death would still have been 
the sacrifice of an innocent victim. It would 
still have shown the hatefulness and cruelty of 
human sin. It might still be regarded, in imag- 
ination, as the substitution of the guiltless for 

1 Phil. 2 : 5-8. 

407 


THE FULNESS OF ATONEMENT 


the guilty. It might still be defined, by a legal 
fiction, as the transference of a penalty to one 
who had not transgressed. It might still be 
presented, by a purely forensic theory, as an 
exhibition of a supposed vindictive element in 
the law, which could only be satisfied by the 
shedding of innocent blood. All this might 
still be attributed to the death of Christ if it 
had befallen him in helpless infancy. But would 
it then have been, in any satisfactory sense, 
an atoning sacrifice? Would it have had any 
power to really reconcile our hearts with the 
law which requires righteousness ? 

No, a thousand times no ! That which gives 
the obedience of the cross its reconciling power 
is the fact that it was voluntary suffering, holy 
suffering, suffering which made Christ per- 
fect , 1 the crown and consummation of his pa- 
tient, faithful, self-denying, stainless life. 

It is only when we look at it in this way that 
the holiness of Christ becomes, not the substi- 
tute for our holiness (which would contradict 
the spirit of the law), but the source of our holi- 
ness, — the consecration of our Kinsman High- 
Priest, in which and by which the consecra- 
tion of his brethren is secured . 2 “Christ is the 
end of the law for righteousness to every one 

iHeb.gjlO. 2 Heb. 2 : 11-18. 


408 


THE FULNESS OF ATONEMENT 


that believeth.” 1 Thus, and thus only, the 
law is satisfied in him. 

Once more, there is a reconciling element in 
the atonement, undoubtedly. It does remove 
a real obstacle between man and God. It does 
bring God nearer to man, in order that man 
may come close to God. But this obstacle is 
never to be thought of as an unwillingness on 
God’s part to pardon and restore the guilty. 
This reconciliation is always to be interpreted 
in the light of Christ’s word of “the new cove- 
nant,” freely and gladly made by the divine 
mercy, and sealed with the most holy seal in 
the universe, — “the precious blood of Christ, as 
of a lamb without blemish and without spot.” 2 

The atonement, then, is never to be regarded 
as the cause of God’s grace. It is the result 
and the seal of his grace. It is the channel made 
by grace, through which all the blessed effects 
of the divine love may flow, across the bitter 
waste that sin has made, to all who hunger 
and thirst after righteousness, in order that 
they may be filled. 

If any one should ask, therefore, “What has 
the atonement done for you?” our answer 

2 1 Pet. 1 : 19. 


Rom. 10 : 4. 


409 


THE FULNESS OF ATONEMENT 


should be broad enough to cover all our needs. 
With Christ God has freely given us all things: 
an assurance of mercy, divinely sealed; a satis- 
faction of the law, divinely perfected; a ransom 
from evil, divinely accomplished; a sacrifice 
for sin, divinely offered; a covenant of peace; 
a spirit of consecration; a good Shepherd of 
our souls; a seed of everlasting life, — and if 
there be any other thing that sinners need for 
their salvation, doubtless this also is in the 
atonement. 

The only false view is that which questions 
the reality of any of these blessings. The only 
dangerous view is that which interprets any 
one of them in such a way as to make it merely 
formal and artificial, and to deny the necessity 
of the others. All views are true which recog- 
nize, through experience, the love of God in 
Christ meeting any of our needs as sinful men, 
and which preserve a grateful openness of heart to 
welcome every new ray of light that comes from 
the cross through the experience of other men. 

After all is said, out of the fulness of each 
ransomed heart, there still remains a secret 
reason for gratitude, unuttered because not yet 
perfectly realized. “ Thanks be unto God for 
his unspeakable gift.’ 5 1 

1 2 Cor. 9 : 15. 

410 


THE FULNESS OF ATONEMENT 
II 

THE LOVE THAT PASSETH KNOWLEDGE 

If there is a mystery in sin, there must also 
be a mystery in the atonement. 

We can know the love of God in Christ which 
meets all our conscious needs as sinners. But 
that love, as it makes provision for all the un- 
searchable necessities of God’s moral govern- 
ment of the universe, must be a love that 
passeth knowledge. 

There are some theologians who object stren- 
uously to this acknowledgment of a mystery in 
the atonement. It seems to them that it leaves 
“in the very focus of revelation a spot of pure 
impenetrable black.” I would rather say that 
it leaves a centre of “light inaccessible and full 
of glory.” 

The humility of partial knowledge is not the 
same as the despair of total ignorance. “We 
know in part, and we prophesy in part .” 1 
This was the last text from which President 
James McCosh spoke in the chapel of Prince- 
ton University. “We know in part,” said he; 
“ but we know!" 

We know sin, for example, in its qualities 
and results, since they are manifested in human 

1 1 Cor. 13 : 9. 

411 


THE FULNESS OF ATONEMENT 


life and in our own souls. But we do not per- 
fectly know it; for its origin, and the secret 
forces which keep it alive and operative, though 
it be in itself a kind of death, and the strange 
subterranean relations which give it a unity 
amid all its diversity, and the mysterious power 
by which it destroys freedom of will while seem- 
ing to express it, — these things are hidden from 
us. They are inscrutable. Sin is a bottomless 
gulf. To account for it rationally would be to 
justify its existence. “Sin explained,” said 
Dr. Edward G. Robinson, “would be sin de- 
fended.” It is in fact a kind of reversed miracle. 
It is the action of the creature without the crea- 
tor. It takes place in a sphere below the reach 
of our thought. It transcends reason, — down - 
ward . 

It is fitting, therefore, it is altogether to be 
expected, that the atonement which is to take 
away sin should also transcend reason, — but 
upward. It ought to be, as it is, an inexplicable 
and unsearchable mystery of redeeming love, 
just as sin is an inexplicable and unsearchable 
mystery of enslaving hate. It ought to cover, 
as it does, all those secret relations in which 
the unity of righteousness consists, just as sin 
entangles the soul in that network of subtle 
bondage wherein the unity of evil consists. 

412 


THE FULNESS OF ATONEMENT 


The atonement, in its divine essence, must go 
as far above our knowledge, as sin, in its mor- 
tal perversity, goes below it. 

.1 L 

Consider the subject from another point of 
view. The atonement is undoubtedly the mani- 
festation of God’s mercy in harmony with his 
justice. But what are mercy and justice, in 
our knowledge of them, but fragments of a 
great circle which sweeps far beyond our vision ? 
So far as logic goes, the forgiveness of sins ap- 
pears like an absolutely impossible thing. An 
offence once committed must stand on the 
books forever as a thing to be condemned and 
punished. So far as logic goes, the execution 
of absolute justice seems to be equally impos- 
sible. We have never seen it. We cannot con- 
ceive nor explain it. “Justice is a fragment, 
mercy is a fragment, mediation is a fragment; 
justice, mercy, mediation as a reason of mercy 
— all three; what indeed are they but great 
vistas and openings into an invisible world in 
which is the point of view which brings them 
all together.” 

And yet in this mysterious region into which 
the divine side of the atonement reaches, there 
are two things which we ought to believe, even 
though we cannot fully comprehend them. 

413 


THE FULNESS OF ATONEMENT 


First, it is necessary to the reality of faith to 
believe that the atonement has a practical rela- 
tion to God, an actual and direct effect upon the 
divine will as well as upon our will. “ Christ’s 
work can be regarded as efficacious in the justi- 
fication and reconciliation of men only in so far 
as we, at the same time, recognize a reference 
of that work to God. Nay, rather, his saving 
operations upon men cannot be understood ex- 
cept it be presupposed that his doing and suf- 
fering for that end had also a value for God, 
whether that be expressed in the motives of 
satisfaction, merit, propitiation, or somehow 
otherwise.” 

Second, it is essential to the moral integrity 
of faith that we should believe that the divine 
justice and mercy, which are harmonized in the 
atonement, are not different in kind, but only 
in degree, from mercy and justice as they are 
revealed in our fragmentary knowledge. There 
can be no satisfaction of divine justice which 
does not justify itself in the moral sense. There 
can be no propitiation of mercy which intro- 
duces a conflict, or an appearance of conflict, 
among the attributes of God. Mercy must be 
merciful; and justice, just. 

This shuts out at once the possibility of inter- 
preting the mystery of atonement by analogy 
414 


THE FULNESS OF ATONEMENT 


with ideas and figures drawn from imperfect 
and cruel systems of human government, or 
from corrupt and superstitious systems of reli- 
gion. The notion of a God whose vindictive 
anger demands a precise equivalent of suffering 
as the condition of release from penalty does 
not belong to Christianity. It belongs to the 
moral ill-temper of a civilization which, like 
that of the middle ages or of the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries, was essentially harsh 
and cruel. It belongs to a conception of life in 
which law was relentless and vindictive, — in 
which men were hung for petty larceny and 
burned alive for heresy; in which war was sim- 
ply a colossal public revenge, and a captured 
city was certain to be sacked. It belongs, in 
its religious kinship, to paganism, to fetichism, 
to the cruel, sensual religions of Mexico and 
Africa. 

Shadows of their darkness have fallen upon 
the outer form of Christianity. Strange and 
uncouth words have found their way into the 
dogmatic books which vainly seek to reduce 
life to logic. Wild and wandering phrases of 
bewildered theologians have represented Christ 
as exposed to the divine wrath in our place, or 
as “wiping away the red anger-spot from the 
brow of God.” Dismal echoes from the chants 
415 


THE FULNESS OF ATONEMENT 


of blood-stained heathen temples have crept 
into the hymns of the church, — echoes which 
say that 

“ On Christ Almighty vengeance fell 
Which must have sunk a world to hell,” 

or that 

**One rosy drop from Jesus 9 heart 
Was worlds of seas to quench God's ire” 

These echoes, these phrases, these words, have 
undoubtedly penetrated, in a wavering and un- 
certain way, into the ritual, the dogma, the 
outer circle, of Christianity. It seems as if, to 
use the expression of that great German theo- 
logian, Rothe, “in his work for man it were the 
constant fate of God to be misunderstood.” 
But these misunderstandings cannot enter, and 
they have not entered, into the inner life where 
Christ is truly manifested as the living sacrifice 
and Saviour. 

There is not a word in all the New Testament 
which implies that Christ offered a sacrifice to 
the anger of God. It is morally inconceivable 
that the Redeemer coming from the bosom of 
the Father to do his work should ever have 
been, in any sense, an object of the divine wrath. 
For that wrath, as we have already seen, is not 
a vindictive anger against sinners; it is a pure 
and holy indignation against sin. How, then, 
416 


THE FULNESS OF ATONEMENT 


could it have rested for a single moment upon 
Christ ? 

Nor is there anything in the Bible to imply 
that Christ has taken that wrath against sin 
away. It still exists. It still hates and con- 
demns sin as much as ever. 

Christ delivers us from the fear of it, not by 
subjecting himself to it, but by separating us 
from the sin against which it is directed. 

How, then, shall we interpret Christ’s suffer- 
ings ? 

There was no infliction of punishment upon 
the innocent instead of the guilty. There was 
no transference of the demerits of the sinful to 
the sinless. Christ remained guiltless; man re- 
mained guilty. But Christ entered into hu- 
manity, freely, willingly, taking on himself all 
its limitations, burdens, pains, and sorrows. 
Christ lived and died with man and for man. 
He was not merely a substitute: he was a rep- 
resentative. He was not thrust into our place: 
he shared our lot; and if that sharing involved 
a sacrificial death upon the cross, if there was 
no other way in which he could be one with 
sinners, and make them one with himself, and 
lift them out of guilt and doom, save by dying 
for their sins, what then ? 

Does the recognition of this, as a mysterious 
417 


THE FULNESS OF ATONEMENT 


fact revealed in the crucifixion, cast any stain 
upon the justice of God? Not so thought 
Christ, who shrank from the cross, yet said, 
“Father, not my will, but thine be done.” Not 
so thought the Apostles, who saw in Christ 
crucified the perfect revelation of the righteous- 
ness and love of God. Not so thought such a 
Christian as Phillips Brooks. The inner life 
of Christendom finds a trife expression in his 
sermon on The Conqueror from Edom. 

“My friends,” he says, “far be it from me 
to read all the deep mystery that is in this pic- 
ture. Only this I know is the burden and soul 
of it all, this truth, that sin is a horrible, strong, 
positive thing, and that not even Divinity 
grapples with him and subdues him except in 
strife and pain. What pain may mean to the 
Infinite and Divine, what difficulty may mean 
to Omnipotence, I cannot tell. Only I know 
that all that they could mean, they mean here. 
This symbol of the blood bears this great truth, 
which has been the power of salvation to mil- 
lions of hearts, and which must make this con- 
queror the Saviour of your hearts, too, the truth 
that only in self-sacrifice and suffering could 
even God conquer sin. Sin is never so dread- 
ful as when we see the Saviour with that blood 
upon his garments. And the Saviour himself 
418 


THE FULNESS OF ATONEMENT 


is never so dear, never wins so utter and so 
tender a love, as when we see what it has cost 
him to save us. Out of that love, born of his 
holy suffering, comes the new impulse after a 
holy life; and so, when we stand at last purified 
by the power of grateful obedience, binding our 
holiness and escape from our sin close to our 
Lord’s struggle with sin for us, it shall be said 
of us that we have c washed our robes and made 
them white in the blood of the Lamb.’ ” 

That the divine mercy is satisfied in this 
conception of the atonement, no one can doubt. 
But how is the satisfaction of the divine justice 
manifested in this view? What glimpse does 
it give us of a holy law vindicated, an eternal 
righteousness maintained ? 

It seems to me that it certainly shows us one 
thing, however much it leaves still hidden from 
our knowledge in the unsearchable counsels of 
God. It shows us that God so honours and 
upholds the moral law by which he governs 
the world, that not even Christ could come into 
union with humanity, not even Christ could be- 
come man, without sharing the consequences 
of man’s sin. Christ was not punished for sins 
that he had never done. Christ was not pun- 
ished for our sins. Christ was not punished at 
all. But because our sins deserve punishment, 
419 


THE FULNESS OF ATONEMENT 


Christ, having become one with us, endured 
the shame and the cross, poured out his soul 
unto death and was numbered with the trans- 
gressors, suffered and died as the human life of 
God , because suffering and death have justly 
come upon the world of sin. 

This is indeed the noblest vindication of the 
law that we can possibly conceive. It elevates 
and illuminates the atonement, so that it shines 
far above us, as a mountain-peak of righteous- 
ness. It makes it a part of an eternal moral 
order, resting upon the very nature of God, 
and his relation to the world as its moral gov- 
ernor. It is a doctrine of majesty and power. 

Forgiveness without atonement, if we could 
conceive of such a thing, would leave us far 
more in the dark, would present a far greater 
mystery. But forgiveness with atonement as- 
sures us that God is in eternal harmony with 
his own law. He has not permitted suffering 
and death to come into the world merely to 
execute a personal vengeance on sin as an in- 
sult offered to his majesty. They are the ex- 
pression of an eternal and righteous mode of 
government. Their presence is necessary, and 
just, and consistent with God’s goodness and 
love as well as with his wisdom and holiness. 
The Son of God, entering the world to redeem 
420 


THE FULNESS OF ATONEMENT 

it, not from without but from within, must 
submit to these conditions. 

He could not be punished. That was impos- 
sible. But he could suffer and die. And so 
he did, confessing and glorifying the integrity 
and solidarity of God’s attributes in the moral 
law of the universe . 1 

Wherein that solidarity consists, what is the 
eternal fitness and propriety of atonement by 
sacrifice and suffering, we can neither fully 
understand nor perfectly explain. “The nature 
of the redemptive act in itself is not to be com- 
passed nor uttered by the language of human 
understanding.” When we look upon it “we 
are in the presence of forces which issue from 
infinity, and pass out of our sight even while 
we are contemplating their effects.” 

This confession of something beyond our 
comprehension in the atonement runs through 
all the literature of the Christian religion. 
Some theologians, indeed, scoff at it and reject 
it. But the heart of the church has always 
felt it profoundly, and acknowledged it with 
adoration. On Calvary we behold the “love 
of Christ which passeth knowledge.” 2 

If the meaning of the cross were perfectly 
plain to us it would be less precious. We know 

1 Rom. 3 : 25. 2 Eph. 3 : 19. 


421 


THE FULNESS OF ATONEMENT 


that we need more than we can know. The 
cross is most dear to our hearts because it is 
the sign of an unsearchable mystery of saving 
love. 


422 


VI 

THE MESSAGE OF THE CROSS 

I 


HHHE cross speaks silently but surely of God’s 
A great love for sinners. For this reason it 
has become the sign under which Christianity 
has won its way in a world of sin. This is not 
a dogma of theology. It is a fact of history. 
Wherever the religion of Christ has advanced, 
its song of victory has been the burden of the 
ancient Latin hymn : 

“Forward the royal banners fly. 

The sacred cross shines out on high. 

Where man's Creator stooped to die 
In human flesh, to draw man nigh ” 

The same burden is repeated in the music of 
the modern church: 

“Onward, Christian soldiers. 

Marching as to war. 

With the cross of Jesus 
Going on before .” 

Nothing could appear more strange, if we 
leave out of view that interpretation of the 
death of Jesus which comes from the faith of 
423 


THE MESSAGE OF THE CROSS 


the atonement, than that the cross, the em- 
blem of the world’s shame and reproach, should 
become the symbol of Christian faith, the trea- 
sure of Christian hope, the banner of Christian 
victory. How came it to be thus transformed ? 
What miracle has exalted the instrument of 
death to the place of glory ? 

When Christianity came to China under this 
banner, the Chinese wondered at it, mocked at 
it, issued an edict against it. This edict said: 
“Why should the worshippers of Jesus rever- 
ence the instrument of his punishment, and 
consider it so to represent him as not to ven- 
ture to tread upon it? Would it be common 
sense, if the father or ancestor of a house had 
been killed by a shot from a gun, or by a wound 
from a sword, that his sons or grandsons should 
reverence the gun or the sword as their father 
or ancestor?” It is a searching question; and 
the only answer to it is in the inner life, where 
the cross of Jesus has been planted as the tree 
of peace and blessing, the sign of divine for- 
giveness and redeeming love; so that the first 
cry of faith is 

“ Simply to Thy cross I clingy 9 
and the last breath of prayer is 

“Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes." 

424 


THE MESSAGE OF THE CROSS 


There is a passage in Goethe’s Confessions of a 
Beautiful Soul which tells the story of human 
experience before the cross. 

“ ‘Now, Almighty God, grant me the gift of 
faith ! ’ This was the prayer that came out of 
the deepest need of my heart. I leaned upon 
the little table beside me, and hid my tear- 
stained face in my hands. At last I was in the 
state in which we must be, if God is to hear our 
prayers, but in which we so seldom are. 

“Yes, but who could ever express, even in the 
dimmest way, the experience that came to me 
then? A secret influence drew my soul away 
to the cross, where Jesus once expired. It was 
an inward leading, I cannot give it any other 
name, like that which draws the heart to its 
beloved one in absence, a spiritual approach 
doubtless far truer and more real than a dream. 
So my soul drew near to him who became man 
and died upon the cross, and in that moment I 
knew what faith was. 

“ ‘This is faith !’ I cried, and sprang up as if 
half frightened. I tried to make sure of my 
experience, to verify my vision, and soon I was 
convinced that my spirit had received a wholly 
new power to uplift itself. 

“In these feelings words forsake us. I could 
distinguish clearly between my experience and 
4 25 


THE MESSAGE OF THE CROSS 


all fantasy. It was entirely free from fantasy. 
It was not a dream-picture. And yet it gave 
me the sense of reality in the object which it 
brought before me, just as imagination does 
when it recalls the features of a dear friend far 
away.” 

Many are the souls that have passed through 
that indescribable experience. Millions of men 
who have been unmoved by philosophy and un- 
convinced by argument, have yielded to the 
mystic attractions of the cross of Jesus. The 
story of this divine charm runs like a thread of 
gold through all the many-coloured literature 
of Christianity. 

If I were asked to name the three books out- 
side of the New Testament which lie closest to 
the Christian heart, and are entitled to be called 
the classics of Christian faith, I should choose 
The Imitation of Christ and The Pilgrim's Prog- 
ress and The Christian Year . There is no dif- 
ference among them in their testimony to the 
power of the cross of Jesus to draw men to him. 

“Take up, therefore, thy cross,” says Thomas 
a Kempis, “and follow Jesus, and thou shalt go 
into life everlasting. He went before bearing 
his cross, and died for thee on the cross, that 
thou mightest also bear thy cross and die on 
the cross with him.” 


426 


THE MESSAGE OF THE CROSS 


‘‘So I saw in my dream,” says John Bunyan, 
“that just as Christian came up with the Cross, 
his burden loosed from off his shoulders and fell 
from off his back, and began to tumble, and so 
continued to do, till it came to the mouth of the 
sepulchre, where it fell in, and I saw it no more. 
Then was Christian glad and lightsome, and 
said with a merry heart, he hath given me rest 
by his sorrow, and life by his death.” 

“Is it not strange,” says John Keble in his 
poem on the Crucifixion, — 

“Is it not strange , the darkest hour 

That ever dawned on sinful earth. 

Should touch the heart with softer power 
For comfort than an angel* s mirth? 

That to the cross the mourner* s eye should turn. 

Sooner than where the stars of Christmas burn ? 


Lord of my heart , by Thy last cry. 

Let not Thy blood on earth be spent : 

Lo, at Thy feet I fainting lie. 

Mine eyes upon Thy wounds are bent; 

Upon Thy streaming wounds my weary eyes 
Wait, like the parched earth on April skies. 

Wash me, and dry these bitter tears; 

Oh, let my heart no farther roam , — 

9 Tis Thine by vows and hopes and fears. 

Long since. Oh, call Thy wanderer home , — 

To that dear home, safe in Thy wounded side , 

Where only broken hearts their sin and shame may hide.**' 

427 


THE MESSAGE OF THE CROSS 


II 

The healing, purifying, pacifying power of 
the cross comes from its silent proclamation of 
the holy and self-sacrificing love of God. It 
reveals him to us as he really is, — eternally 
willing to forgive sin, and entirely ready to 
suffer for the sake of making its forgiveness 
perfect and pure and altogether beyond ques- 
tion. It carries in itself the marks of an im- 
measurable mercy; a tender resolution to meet, 
for our sake, requirements that are beyond our 
ken; a tranquil assurance that God’s pardon 
is a holy pardon, a righteous pardon, a pardon 
through which “ there is no condemnation to 
those who are in Christ Jesus.” 1 

But we do not say that this message of the 
cross is the only ministry of peace and blessing 
and enrichment that Christ has brought to the 
life of man. Nor do we say that those who 
have failed to hear in this message the very 
same words which it brings to us, or to inter- 
pret these words as they have been interpreted 
in our experience, have not been blessed in 
any way by Christ. 

Some have followed him, as Peter did at 
first, unwilling to think of his cross. Some 

1 Rom. 8 : 1. 

428 


THE MESSAGE OF THE CROSS 


have trusted his forgiving power, as Mary Mag- 
dalen did, without apprehending what his for- 
giveness would cost. Some have called upon 
him for salvation, as the penitent thief did, 
without understanding the great significance 
of his sacrifice. And there are some to-day who 
belong to Christ in their hearts and lives, but 
who have not yet read clearly the writing above 
the cross. 

Pure and patient souls, companions of the 
merciful labours of Jesus, lovers of his gracious 
doctrine, worshippers of his divine perfection, 
illustrators of his meek and lowly spirit, whose 
lives are fragrant with the sweetness of the 
Master’s name, of whose presence the world is 
glad, in whose lowly service the heart of the 
Lord rejoiceth, — surely of them we may say. 
If any man have the spirit of Christ , he is one of 
his . 

The saving shadow of the cross falls upon 
these gentle lives, though they know it not. 
Christ did not die only for those who call him 
“Lord.” He died also for those who minister 
to him without knowing it. 

But the message which is proclaimed to the 
world by these serene and untroubled lives, — 
it is certainly a gospel; but is it, indeed, the 
Gospel for which the great mass of men, sin- 
429 


THE MESSAGE OF THE CROSS 


ful, struggling, weary, despondent, are longing ? 
No; it is imperfect. It does not go down to 
the bottom of human experience. It does not 
meet the full need of those who labour and are 
heavy-laden under the weight of sin, of those 
who are tormented with remorse, of those who 
would give all that they have if they could blot 
out the fatal past and cast away the burden 
of their conscious guilt. Poor strugglers under 
the curse of evil, the vast majority of mankind 
long passionately for the blessedness of the man 
whose sins are forgiven, whose transgressions 
are covered. To such men the gospel of the 
Son of God, who bore our sins in his own body 
on the tree, is the real gospel, the veritable 
“good tidings of great joy.” 

Ill 

There is no final formula of the cross. Per- 
haps if it could have been put into a series of 
logical propositions, the divine sacrifice would 
not have been necessary. But God has seen fit 
to save men, not by a system of definitions, but 
by an experience of grace. 

This experience takes into itself all the per- 
manent elements of the soul’s life. It includes 
and interprets also all those elements which are 
progressive, the factors of man’s moral being 

430 


THE MESSAGE OF THE CROSS 

which are in process of development through 
the discipline of the individual and the race. 

It has been well said that “one of the objects 
of the atonement is to form the conscience to 
which it makes its appeal.” 

It would be strange, indeed, if, with the edu- 
cation of man’s ethical nature, there were not 
also a real progress in the interpretation of the 
message of the cross. It does not change; it 
unfolds. 

We can see how it grew in the epistles of St. 
Paul. It was the same gospel from the begin- 
ning to the end of his life. But it found new 
expressions and took larger forms. It meant 
one thing in Thessalonica, and more of the same 
thing in Galatia, and more of the same thing in 
Corinth, and more of the same thing in Rome, 
until, finally, it rose to its height in the epistles 
of the imprisonment, where it appears as the 
good news of the reconciliation of all things, 
“whether they be things in earth or things in 
heaven.” 1 

There are three great ideas in which the 
human race has made an immense ethical 
advance. And it seems to me that all of these 
advancing ideas must have an influence upon 

1 Col . 1 : 20. 

431 


THE MESSAGE OF THE CROSS 


our interpretation of the message of the cross, 
and must open new vistas of wondrous glory 
in the circle of its universal significance. 

The first of these ideas is the unity and 
solidarity of mankind. It is characteristic of 
modern thought that, in its view, 

“ The individual withers, and the world is more and more. 9 * 

Vast sociological tables are compiled, covering 
the physical peculiarities and social customs, 
the arts and industries, the family ties and 
ethical conceptions, the forms of government 
and modes of worship of all sorts and condi- 
tions of men, in all quarters of the globe. The 
causes of the rise or decline of certain tribes are 
investigated; the secret bonds which unite the 
generations on an upward or downward scale 
are traced; the average intelligence of com- 
munities is measured; the average welfare of 
the world is estimated; the collective view of 
mankind predominates in the thoughtful mind 
of to-day. 

It would be singular and unfortunate if this 
new view of life did not bring new and larger 
meanings into the message of the cross. It 
must be the meeting-point of races, as well as 
the landmark of centuries. It must reconcile 
man with men, as well as men with God. It 
432 


THE MESSAGE OF THE CROSS 


must be an opener of closed doors, a conciliator 
of estranged peoples.. 

The universal charter of the cross, — “Go ye 
therefore and disciple all nations,” 1 — forgotten 
and obscured in ages of particularism, revives 
in ages of human brotherhood. A gospel of 
limited atonement becomes a manifest absurd- 
ity of selfishness. Sacrifice for others — one man 
for another, one race for another, and Christ for 
all — is seen to be built into the very structure 
of Christianity. 

If the modern world is to hear the message 
of the cross, the church must speak the language 
of to-day — the language of universal atonement 
and foreign missions. 

Another idea in which there has been a great 
advance is the notion of law. In the first stage 
of human progress, the concept of law is chiefly 
vindictive; it simply destroys the offender. 
In the next stage, it takes on a nobler aspect 
and becomes a system which inflicts retribution 
on the law-breaker in order that its majesty 
may be upheld and the peace of society secured 
by the wholesome restraints of fear. Under this 
conception, law punishes the offender in order 
that other men may be afraid to offend. In 

1 St. Matt. 28 : 19. 

433 


THE MESSAGE OF THE CROSS 


the third and highest stage, the reformative 
principle of law comes into clear view and takes 
the leadership. The regulative idea does not 
vanish. The idea of a positive guilt in crime 
is not lost. But both become subordinate to 
the higher idea of a moral purpose in law, — 
the rescue and reformation of the offender. 
Rectoral justice still remains a necessity of 
government, but reformative justice appears 
as the supreme necessity in a moral order of 
society. 

No man can study the history of laws, no 
man can read the story of prison reform and 
compare the penal statutes of three centuries 
ago with those of to-day, without perceiving 
that there has been a wonderful progress in 
this direction. And side by side with it, not 
always with equal steps, but always in the same 
direction, we see a progress in the interpreta- 
tion of atonement. 

The old idea, that Christ died because God 
was insulted and must punish somebody, fades 
out. The conception of the death of Jesus as 
a mere exhibition of governmental severity for 
the sake of keeping order in the universe, be- 
comes too narrow. The measuring of the pre- 
cise amount of Christ’s suffering, as a quid pro 
quo for an equal amount of penalty incurred 
434 


THE MESSAGE OF THE CROSS 


by human sin, no longer satisfies the moral 
sense. The cross itself, with its simplicity, its 
generosity of sacrifice, its evident reforming 
and regenerating power upon the heart, — the 
cross itself leads the race upward and onward 
in the interpretation of its message. 

Whatever else the sufferings of Jesus may 
mean, whatever unsearchable necessities of the 
divine government they may meet, they must 
meet this great requirement, this ultimate ideal 
of all moral law. Their end must be righteous- 
ness, their purpose must be “to make us good.” 

So the cross comes with a deeper message 
than mere vindication of law, or mere exemption 
from penalty. It says to every man: “Christ 
was crucified with thee, that thou mightest be 
crucified with him. He died for thee, that thou 
shouldest not henceforth live unto thyself, but 
unto him who died for thee and rose again. 
Rise with him into the new life. Never despair. 
Never surrender to remorse or fear or death. 
Come up with Christ, come on with Christ* 
into the ransomed life.” 

There is one more idea in which there has 
been a real advance; and that is, the idea of 
sin. Here I do not think it is possible for us 
to trace the progress through the centuries, as 
435 


THE MESSAGE OF THE CROSS 


we can trace the ideas of human solidarity and 
of law. But certainly there is in the deepest 
and best modern thought a more profound and 
vital conception of the nature of sin, than there 
was in the ages when it was imagined that a 
murderer or an adul tress could “ square the 
record” by building a church or endowing a 
monastery. I think we feel now, if we admit 
that there is such a thing as sin at all, that it 
cannot be in any sense a mere external. “The 
laws of God are written in the human soul, and 
the sin of man is a sin against the law of his 
own nature.” 

There is an unnaturalness in sin which is the 
worst kind of unworthiness. It cannot pos- 
sibly be taken away by any outward pardon, 
by any formal justification at the bar of a law 
which is external to us. Not only must the 
law which is above us be fulfilled, but also the 
law which is within us must be restored. This 
can only be done by the renewal of a vital com- 
munion with God, who is the author of both 
laws. He must be our deliverer outwardly and 
inwardly, — 

“Be of sin the double cure 
Save me from its guilt and power." 

The cross speaks to us not only of the death 
of Christ for us, but of the life of the Spirit in 
436 


THE MESSAGE OF THE CROSS 


us. This was the interpretation which Jesus 
himself put upon it. He said, “It is expedient 
for you that I go away: for if I go not away 
the Comforter will not come unto you .” 1 Cer- 
tainly we have not entered into the full mean- 
ing of Christ’s death until we have learned to 
see in it the condition and the means of the dis- 
pensation of the Spirit. 

We may not know the significance of this 
on the divine side. Why the Comforter would 
not come unless Christ went away, we cannot 
tell. But on the human side the truth is not 
difficult to apprehend. The vision of Christ’s 
suffering and death makes it infinitely easier 
for us to receive the Comforter. It breaks the 
bonds of that rigid and pedantic notion of God 
which exhibits him as remote, inflexible, im- 
passible. It shows us that he is great enough 
and good enough to suffer with us in order to 
deliver us from sin. It diffuses through the 
soul the fragrance of a new kind of forgiveness, 
- — the only real forgiveness, — a forgiveness 
which not only blots out guilt, but opens the 
heart’s door to the Spirit and restores divine 
fellowship. 

Thus it seems to me that the message of the 
cross, because it is a living message, must be 

1 St. John 16 : 7. 

437 


THE MESSAGE OF THE CROSS 


ever growing and drawing new words into its 
service, and charging them with richer mean- 
ing. 

The theory of the atonement will never be 
completed until the discipline and education of 
humanity are completed. 

You come to a man with your theory of the 
atonement, and he says, “Yes, perhaps it means 
that to you, but it means something else, some- 
thing far more precious, to me.” You come to 
another man, and he says: “No doubt there is 
truth in your view, but it is not all the truth. 
Christ crucified means more than that to me.” 
And so it ought to be, so it must be, if the 
atonement has a real place in the inner life. 
We ought not to expect, we ought not to wish, 
that it should ever be defined or explained in 
a formula valid for all men and for all time. 
Whatever it may be in itself, whatever it may 
be in its objective relations to God’s govern- 
ment of the world, for us it must be a pro- 
gressive, growing, expanding element of spiri- 
tual peace and power. 

IV 

This expanding message of the cross, then, is 
what I believe to be the true gospel for a world 
of sin. The heart of it never changes. “Herein 
438 


THE MESSAGE OF THE CROSS 

is love, not that we loved God, but that he 
loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitia- 
tion for our sins.” 

Is such a gospel as this unsuited to the pres- 
ent age ? Is such a gospel as this a low gospel, 
a narrow gospel, an immoral gospel, an obso- 
lete gospel, a gospel to be ashamed of in the 
presence of learning and refinement and moral 
earnestness? Let the men whose hearts have 
been cleansed and ennobled by it — the men 
like Paul, and Augustine, and Francis of Assisi, 
and Martin Luther, and John Wesley — make 
answer. 

Is such an experience as this an unreal ex- 
perience, a fantastic thing, a thing of no great 
consequence, of no large influence in 

“ The very world which is the world 
Of all of uSy — the place where in the end 
We find our happiness , or not at all”? 

Let the answer come from the triumph in the 
midst of sorrow, the courage in the face of 
death, and the steadfast devotion to every 
noble cause, of those who have learned to say, 
“The life that I now live in the flesh I live by 
the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and 
gave himself for me.” 

Is such a message as this to the inner life of 
439 


THE MESSAGE OF THE CROSS 


man no longer needed, in these latter days? 
Let the unchanged, struggling, sinful heart of 
man make answer. 

Burdened with the weight of responsibilities 
to which we have never lived up, disenchanted 
by the sad advance of a knowledge with which 
our vital wisdom has not kept pace, stained 
and dishonoured by sins of selfishness and pride 
and impurity and unbrotherliness and greed and 
avarice and anger, which our very privileges 
charge with a tenfold guilt, — delicate and self- 
complacent offenders, men who know but do 
not practise, heirs of all the ages who have 
bartered our birthright, and declined our duty, 
and sinned against light a thousand times, — 
how stand we in the sight of God, in these 
latter days, without a Saviour from our sins ? 

Is this an easy age, a careless age, a peace- 
ful, secure, sin-free age for the inner life? On 
every side, with growing knowledge, the shades 
of the prison-house close around us. 

The moralists tell us of ever-increasing obli- 
gations, duties, demands of personal and social 
righteousness. The standard rises, but the in- 
spiration sinks. Students of life tell us of the 
permanence and power of evil, the taint of 
blood, the corruption of nature, the force of 
degeneration, the heavy fetters of heredity. 

440 


THE MESSAGE OF THE CROSS 


We need a God with us to set us free. Phi- 
losophers tell us that there may be a God, but 
that he is certainly distant, impersonal, un- 
known, unknowable. 

What an age for a divine Redeemer, a liber- 
ating God incarnate, a real atonement to de- 
liver us from the coil of sin ! Is there not a 
welcome in the world to-day for the Conqueror 
from Edom? Is there not a mission still in 
our inner life for the Son of God, who loved us 
and gave himself for us? 

“ The very God ! think, Abib ; dost thou think ? 

So the All-great were the All-loving, too , — 

So through the thunder comes a human voice 
Saying, * 0 heart I made, a heart beats here! 

Face my hands fashioned , see it in myself ! 

Thou hast no power, nor mayest conceive of mine , 
But love I gave thee with myself to love , 

And thou must love me who have died for thee ! * ” 


441 












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